


are we dancing (like we're burning in paradise)

by djjdkim



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: (no mentions ever of baekchen's deaths, Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Angel/Demon Relationship, Angst, BRIEF MENTIONS OF MINOR CHARACTER DETAH, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Romance, dont read if ur super religious, just brief mentions, lots of death concepts, no graphic depictions, there are lots of dogs in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 10:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13879056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/djjdkim/pseuds/djjdkim
Summary: Baekhyun is a demon, cheeky and confident, and really only has one target for his mischief making-- Kim Jongdae, an angel. And Baekhyun's bent on making Jongdae's afterlife as difficult as he possibly could (until feelings get involved).





	are we dancing (like we're burning in paradise)

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fic written for a little fic giveaway that I held, one of my wonderful wonderful friendos requested this prompt, and I'm really sorry def for not filling the potential of this amazing concept and idea, because there's so much you could do with it, but I really,, didn't,, do very well in exploring this concept. So yes i'm really sorry I wasted this awesome idea, but I HOPE YOU ENJOY ANYWAY.
> 
> there's alot of boring scenes in here that I went to the trouble of writing so I decided eh why not leave it in LMAO so sorry about those, I hope you don't find it too boring!!!

The night is silent save for the seemingly endless wailing of the siren, the rush of air as the vehicle speeds past on the empty roads. Explosions of commands shouted over each other as soon as the vehicle stops, beeping of machines and hurried footsteps contrast shockingly with the dead quiet roads on the way there, the sudden whirlwind of chaos taking the man off guard.

He barely manages to duck to the side as a nurse rushes by him, helping to lower the body from the ambulance before the team of them immediately wheel the bed down the corridor.

It’s been too long since he’s been to a hospital despite his daughter demanding for him to get his check ups, and though he knows that there has been an emergency the sheer extent of the chaos still renders him speechless, completely in disbelief that a place of the ill and weak could be so alive in the ungodly hours of the morning.

“Want to go have a look?”

The man jumps, never even noticing the presence beside him until he hears a quiet, soft sort of rustling, hears the gentle soothing voice that carries over the mess of noise around them.

“Sorry?” he blurts, eyes rounded in surprise upon catching on the man beside him.

Blindingly bright hair, the first thing he notices. Hair so beautifully golden it nearly outshines the way the man’s skin seems to glow, brighter than the painfully white hospital lights.

But this glow isn’t quite the same-- the light that this stranger emits is a soft shine, the same warmth of a crackling fireplace in the winter. His twinkling light brown eyes are equally warm when they land on him, crinkling immediately on the corners as his lips pull right up into smile far more dazzling than the reflection of the ceiling lights on the polished marble hospital floors. And perhaps even more dazzling than the majestic masses of feathers that sprout from the exposed pale skin on his back, each perfectly pure white one fluttering gently as he turns to face him.

“Lee Young Ho, right?” the gorgeous man smiles, again. He nods in the direction the nurses had gone, pushing the wheeled bed from the ambulance. “Do you want to have a look? I’m giving you one last time to look at your body before we should leave.”

The man stares, and he stares. No, that’s--

“That’s not me,” he splutters, glancing wildly back at forth, then down at himself.

“You died in the ambulance on the way here but dawdled all this time, I knew you’d be a difficult one,” the other flashes him another grin, eyebrows pulled up in what seems to be both masked irritation and sympathy, lost in the blonde hair falling over his forehead. “You should’ve left your body as soon as you died, so I wouldn’t have had to come all the way here.”

The man isn’t given any more time to blink confusedly at the other’s words, pulled by the elbow down the corridor, barely even registering the tickle of the feathers that brush against his arm with the sheer size of the beautiful wings folded up against the other’s back.

“As I said,” the other murmurs, voice still remarkably sweet as he pulls the older man along. “I give everyone the chance to briefly see their physical bodies one last time--” the older man cuts him off as he gasps, a nurse flipping through her clipboard with furrowed eyebrows walking straight through him. The blonde only huffs, an amused smile curling the corners of his lips right up.

He doesn’t release his grip on the middle aged man’s elbow, letting him peer through the small window into the emergency room.

“Were you a rich man, Sir?” he pipes up after a moment, eyes glancing up and down and taking in the other’s clothes. “Shouldn’t have splurged on all those fatty foods, should’ve eaten more of your wife’s home cooked meals rather than dine in restaurants everyday.”

That gets the older man’s attention, dragging his eyes off the scene of multiple doctors bending over his own body in the room and back to catch the blonde’s soft smile.

“Heart attack,” the angel’s-- he must be an angel-- hand still resting on the man’s elbow serves as a gentle, comforting warmth despite the cold blank walls that surround them. “Coronary heart disease, with your blood supply to your heart blocked. See, should’ve had those check ups as your daughter and your son in law suggested. They only mean for the best.”

In the silence from the man next to him, the blonde sighs, the smile never seeming to leave the corners of his mouth. He gives a gentle tug, demanding the attention of the other and again drawing his eyes away from the resuscitation attempt.

“They’re not going to succeed-- so it’s time for us to get going, Sir.”

The words were barely out of his mouth before a guffaw erupts behind them, the blonde whipping around with the smile dropping right off his lips.

Crimson red eyes flicker to the recently deceased man from where they had been resting on nails-- no, claws-- delicately painted a glossy black, pinning him down in a single chilly stare, to the angel. “Forget it, Jongdae.”

The middle aged man immediately backs away, catching sight of the sharp canines that gleamed just enough under the white lights overhead to send a chill down his spine when he-- it-- spoke. Then there’s a horrible scraping sound as the red-eyed creature moved, and only then did the older man catch sight of the jagged lines and sharp, pointed spikes of leathery wings, wings as large as the angel’s, as black as the angel’s wings are white. They slide against the wall that the creature is leaning against, a sound nearly as horrible as nails on chalkboard with the hard edges that contrast so spectacularly to the softness of the angel’s feathers.

He had called the blonde a name, a name that slithered out of his strangely pretty pink lips in an almost purr, velvety and light hearted.

With a roll of his eyes, Jongdae crosses his arms over his chest, stepping to shield the new soul behind himself, filling the man’s field of view with the expanse of his feathers-- leaving him to only ponder how truly beautiful the wings would be when fully stretched out rather than folded back.

“Can you stop turning up literally whenever you’re not needed?” the angel huffs, and the other figure lifts his head of glossy black hair, straightening up from his position slouching against the wall.

“Who died and put you in charge?” the fanged man smirks, canines slipping out between his teeth yet again. “I’m here to take him.”

“Stop messing around, Byun Baekhyun,” Jongdae groans, taking a step closer to the other, despite the horrifically red eyes and single black claw that was raised to point at the man from over Jongdae’s shoulder. “You’re not here to take anyone. I have orders, I’m not letting him go with some demon down to Hell.”

“As usual,” the creature, the demon, scoffs, blowing at his black fringe. “So bossy.”

He peers over Jongdae’s shoulder, flashing a very terrifyingly toothy grin at the middle aged man. 

“Good evening Sir,” he raises his eyebrows. “How would you like to come with me for the night? We provide three meals a day, the luxury of your own room, which Jongdae here would be unable to provide for you, and a fancy new eye colour like mine if you’d go down under with me.”

The man startles at the quiet grumble that borders a growl that escapes the blonde’s throat as the angel turns towards him. Jongdae’s hands land on his shoulders, and a sudden white light, bright yet still soft in a way that doesn’t blind the older man, soft like the feeling of feathers brushing yet again against his sides, spreads through the entire hospital corridor.

Though it doesn’t seem like the rest of the living milling around them seem to notice at all, nurses continuing to hurry on their way, doctors in the ER tripping in their haste as they attempt to save a dead man.

Said man glances through the window at his physical self one last time before the white envelopes his vision, allowing the peace to wash over him, coaxing his mind to relax-- let it go.

“If you didn’t turn up I would’ve let him wait here to see his family one last time,” Jongdae snaps, rounding on Baekhyun and letting the bright globe of white light fade from the particular corner of the hospital, taking the soul of the man with it.

“And you have all the time in the world to dawdle, do you?” the demon grins, taking particular note of Jongdae’s eyes dropping uneasily to the sharp tip of the single fang exposed through his lips whenever he smirks in that certain manner.

“It’s what he deserved,” Jongdae huffs instead, warm hazel eyes watching as an older woman with a younger couple rush up to the closed door of the ER, muffling their cries with their hands over their faces.

“That’s funny,” the demon chuckles, red eyes landing on Jongdae’s features, his long eyelashes and the way each one of them delicately curls upwards, and his soft blonde locks, before following his gaze. “Who are you to decide how he lived his life and what he deserves when he dies?”

“He’s going to Heaven, you imbecile,” Jongdae mutters, throwing Baekhyun a look of undeniable impatience from the corner of his eyes. “I’d assume that him and his life is deemed decent enough and worthy to be let in our gates.”

The demon shrugs, returning to checking on his long, black nails. “In that case, why are you so cocky in deciding how long he gets to stay here before moving on?” he snorts, again, and Jongdae’s eyebrows knit together in poorly concealed disdain. “How very…  _ angelic _ of you to be so sympathetic and considerate, but I thought you’re always too busy for things like that.”

“I’m an angel,” Jongdae mutters again, brushing the other off and setting off at a brisk pace back down the corridor, the way they came. “We don’t idly spend the afterlife meaninglessly,” he throws over his shoulder, with a pointed glance toward the demon.

“If you’re so busy,” Baekhyun chimes, pulling forward to match Jongdae step for step, glancing sideways at him, the same grin sitting undisturbed on his face. “I’ll happily… babysit your next soul if you’d like. Free of charge,” he adds as Jongdae whips his face towards him, soft hair bouncing with the movement, light coloured eyes narrowed at him.

“Byun Baekhyun, what is your problem?” he grumbles before setting off again, desperate to escape the infuriating presence of the demon who is seemingly intent on following right on his heel even as he walks straight through the sliding glass doors. “Why are you so intent on popping up all the time? I have things to do, and I doubt that you don’t.”

Baekhyun smiles, all cheek and mischief dancing in his glittering red eyes, walking backwards out of the hospital until he meets Jongdae’s gaze, pulling in front of him. “You’re too heavenly,” he says, voice bright in the night-- bright like his bloody irises, bright like Jongdae’s beautifully pure wings. “So heavenly that I feel a need to make your days a bit more like Hell.”

“Get lost,” Jongdae hisses in response, wings unfurling in the blink of an eye.

Baekhyun only watches the feathers stretch from the exposed window on the back of the white shirt he’s wearing, so pale that each and every one of the feathers glow an eerie, pearly white under the moon.

With his full wing span on display, the angel shadows the moon completely-- too bright, with far too much light in his entire being for a creature of Hell to look at.

Jongdae’s feathers make no noise when the wings propel him gracefully into the night sky, soaring off without another word.

With a slight chuckle, Baekhyun stretches his arms over his head, simultaneously allowing his own leathery pair to spring alive from where they had been folded tight against his back. And like how he straightens his arms, the jagged black lines of his bat wings flex, curling and unfurling.

The thought of pursuing Jongdae in the air amuses Baekhyun for a moment. But perhaps he should save that for tomorrow. He’d spare Jongdae the irritation for the rest of today-- and yet his fangs are already showing as he chuckles simply at the mere idea of the angel’s face of pure annoyance that is so different to the perfectly angelic demeanour he’s expected to have.

  
  
  


Jongdae bites back a curse, spying a familiar pair of gleaming blood red eyes blinking at him in thinly veiled amusement from the shadows of the alleyway.

“Ssh,” he hushes, patting the back of the young girl and gently stretching his wings so that they enveloped her shaking form in his arms. “It’s alright. You’re safe now.”

He shoots a glare towards the darkness where the demon is hiding, watching the scene, mouthing a fruitless ‘go away!’ towards him.

“I’m sorry this had to happen to you,” Jongdae murmurs, stroking the girl’s hair and feels where the blood from her head wound had clotted in clumps in her hair from her last moments. Her blood is still on the asphalt, with the tyre tracks running through it as a testimony of the way she died.

Though her body still lies there, an abstract painting of a red figure on a black background, he means to move it—it’s not fair for her if the physical body that housed her soul so well for eighteen years is left unattended in the middle of the road and open to be abused by any other cars that would come along the road.

“Aww, how heart breaking.”

Jongdae groans, pulling the young lady close to himself as she jumps, entire body quivering from the fear of it all. She’s far too shaken from the impact of the car slamming into her as it is, without needing to see a demon with her very own eyes before moving on into the afterlife.

“Go away, Byun Baekhyun,” Jongdae warns, the girl whimpering as she notices the pale fangs along with the demonic red eyes once Baekhyun steps out of the shadows and into the pool of light casted by the lone street light.

The demon coos again, extending a finger towards the lady who immediately buries herself in Jongdae’s chest.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he grins. “Don’t cry anymore. I’m here to take you on the next leg of your journey.”

Jongdae releases one of his own hands to slap Baekhyun’s away, angling his body so that he further shields the fragile girl from him.

She looks up at the angel, wide eyes still watery with tears that she hadn’t finished shedding yet. “Am I—” she hiccups. “Am I going to Hell?”

Jongdae opens his mouth to respond, wiping the tear tracks down her cheek with a thumb, before she continues to cry, babbling through the fresh wave of tears.

“But I didn’t—do anything wrong,” she sniffs, and Jongdae gently sighs, pressing her against his chest.

“It’s alright, he’s not going to take you.”

He sends her off like that, the white light that envelopes her easily outshining the flickering street light—then immediately turns to Baekhyun.

“Can you stop messing with my job?” he scowls, striding towards him and feeling the familiar bubble of frustration in his chest as the demon perfectly holds his ground.

“Oh, sorry,” Baekhyun chuckles, tilting his head to one side to regard the angel. “I wasn’t aware you were paid.”

Jongdae moves away, releasing a huff in annoyance. “Not ending up like you is enough reward for me.”

“Why do I feel like you shouldn’t deserve to be an angel with that attitude of yours?” Baekhyun chuckles, stepping closer just as Jongdae pulls back. “What did you do in your life to make you so great?”

“And what did you do in your life to make you so foul?” the angel bites right back, raising his eyebrows. Baekhyun’s eyes land on the curious way only the inner corners of his eyebrows seem to rise, slanting backwards as Jongdae peers at him. “But for some reason, I don’t think I’ll be surprised to hear whatever it is.”

“You make me curious,” he smiles, feeling the way his pink lips pull around the fangs that stick out from his otherwise perfectly neat row of teeth. He couldn’t stop running his tongue over them when he first got them, when he first died—though all memory of his lifetime had been wiped completely from his memory, he was caught up on the foreign feeling of the canines for at least the first few weeks. “Now I’d love to know how I lived.”

“Good. You really should get your memory back,” Jongdae sniffs, turning away from Baekhyun. “It would be a suitable punishment for you to remember all your sins and reflect on them for the rest of eternity.”

“How considerate of you,” Baekhyun snorts, taking yet another step closer.

“Right?” Jongdae quirks his lips up briefly at him, nothing close to the way he warmly welcomes the recently dead with gentle smiles that stretch his lips.

He ducks away, making his escape from the dark alleyway that Baekhyun seems far too much at home in. The shadows that surround them are perfectly the colour of the demon’s hair and nightmarish wings, letting him melt perfectly into the darkness. The clothes the demon’s dressed in are similar shades, dull leather boots and ripped pants both just as black as the sky when it is darkest—and his shirt is no different, just as tattered as his pants.

While Jongdae wears a pristine white outfit, specially designed to bare his back and allow space for his wings, it looks more like holes were stabbed through Baekhyun’s black shirt for his wings to stick through, ripping the material a little bit more every time he stretches them further than the shirt allows.

“I suppose,” Jongdae continues, backing away with his eyes still trained on the demon. “At least one of us should be considerate, don’t you think?” he glances up and down Baekhyun’s figure before flashing him another grimace-like smile. “And I’m pretty sure it’s not you.”

Baekhyun barks out an unnecessarily loud laugh, letting the sound ricochet through the alley, even when he’s left on his own in the darkness.

Though it’s been presumably years of Baekhyun’s annoying presence for every day of Jongdae’s afterlife, and he really should be used to it, he can’t help but hope that one day would pass without seeing his infuriating knowing smirk. Though the concept of time is instantly lost after death, considering one would then spend the rest of forever in whatever form they are in and thus losing the importance of time, at least it feels like years of being unable to shake the demon off—no matter how many times he’s flown in escape from him.

Again, Baekhyun would chuckle heartily upon hearing Jongdae call his duty as an angel his work.

People who lived rewarding lives, spending every moment purposefully, were granted the ability to continue that after their death, assigned roles such as the collection of the souls of people who recently passed to send them through to Heaven.

Such jobs are entrusted to the perfect, virtuous, everything good encompassed in angels. Demons like Baekhyun are the hopeless, discarded aftermaths of tragically ruined lifetimes, left to their own devices until the end of time.

Which makes perfect sense. With a whole afterlife to waste, Baekhyun’s bored.

What still doesn’t make sense to Jongdae, however, is why he isn’t yet bored with the same target to annoy even after all this time. Ever since he spied Jongdae from his perch on top of black, metal school gates as the angel walked past, he’d made up his mind on following him, harassing him, at every chance he has.

And what makes even less sense to Jongdae, however, is why he similarly felt a desire to cross the road that separated them and head towards Baekhyun the first time he saw him too, on top of those school gates.

But right now, he would prefer to be as far away from him as he possibly could.

“I’m pretty sure she’s mine though.”

Jongdae grabs the pretty young lady’s hand, tugging her away from the demon’s clutches-- though, she doesn’t seem to be afraid, round brown eyes blinking from the angel to his nemesis in quiet interest.

“Stop claiming what isn’t yours!” Jongdae whines, wrapping an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Hands off her, pretty boy,” comes a chuckle from behind the two of them as Jongdae turns around, Baekhyun instantly moving to stand in front of them once again. “I said, mine.”

“Dear Lord,” Jongdae sighs, exasperated. He quirks his lips up in a kittenish curl of a smile, equal parts insincere and sarcastic. “This is my  _ job _ , sweetie.”

The demon returns the grin, though amused and intrigued instead. “I appreciate you thinking so highly of me, but acknowledging me as your Lord might get you in trouble.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” The lady clears her throat, glancing between the two highly attractive beings, one next to her at her side and one in front of her, throwing their petty arguments over her head. “But I already have a boyfriend.” She lowers her eyes to the ground for a moment after, expression falling. “Had.”

The two men stop, eyes meeting each other’s for a brief moment in silence.

“Look at what you’ve done,” Jongdae mutters, just as childish as the way Baekhyun claims souls that Jongdae’s supposed to escort to Heaven. “Now you’ve made her sad.”

The demon only shrugs, huffing. “Not my  _ ‘job’  _ to be angelic,” he flashes a toothy grin in Jongdae’s direction, raising his fingers in mocking air-quotation marks at him.

 

“Stop it,” he exclaims, voice embarrassingly high in frustration, pulling the little boy out of Baekhyun’s clutches and hoisting him up protectively into his arms.

“Bloody Hell, Jongdae,” Baekhyun chuckles, shaking his head in amusement at Jongdae’s apparently hilarious irritation. “No need to take it so seriously.”

“Watch your mouth,” the angel narrows his eyes at him, only setting off an even greater laughing fit from the demon.

“Oh, are we banning more words as swear words? I thought I was good as long as I don’t curse your God.”

Jongdae spins around, carrying the child who peers over the angel’s wings at the weird looking man with red eyes. “Come on, sweetie, lets go.”

“Don’t go with that uncle,” comes from behind Jongdae, who rolls his eyes, holding onto the boy tighter. “Come with me, and we can get ice cream on the way.”

Jongdae snorts, patting the boy’s hair as he feels him straighten up at the mention of the treat. “That’s an uncle who likes vanilla more than chocolate,” he explains to the boy, ears picking up Baekhyun’s incredulous snort with satisfaction.

“You’re funny, Kim Jongdae,” Baekhyun barks. “It’s okay, baby, uncle will buy you chocolate ice cream--”

“Wow,” Jongdae exclaims, whirling back around to gape at Baekhyun, eyes gleaming victoriously. “I was only guessing but you’re really one of those people, Byun Baekhyun.”

It leaves Baekhyun spluttering, caught off-guard for once in his afterlife and watching Jongdae vanish into his usual white light with the boy in his arms still cutely asking whether he’d actually get his ice cream.

He remains standing there before sitting himself down on a nearby bench, paying little attention to the living passerbys who stride past him.

It’s a nice wooden bench, shaded by the few big trees dotting the side of the street-- if only he’d pay any attention to any of it. He lounges back, letting his eyes slip shut against the blinding sunshine hitting his face.

The chatter of children, around the same age as the one Jongdae took if Baekhyun guesses correctly, on their way back home from school and the grandparents who hold onto their tiny hands is drowned out by sudden, furious barking for a moment, disrupting the peace of the scenic street and the train of thought coursing through the demon’s head.

He groans, sitting up straight and staring right into the eyes of the large white dog poised on the side of the street, barking at him with his lips drawn back in a show of his teeth.

He scoffs. The noisy thing looks just like Jongdae, with its perfectly groomed, perfectly spotless white fur and pretty brown eyes. Standing with its back straight and pulling against the lead much to its owner’s confusion, pretending to be bigger than it actually is, all snappy, loud barks and no bite.

As if in lazy retaliation, Baekhyun bares his own teeth, shutting the beast up immediately. Wimpy, overly defensive.

Baekhyun lies back again, grinning in amusement at his own comparisons of the dog to the one and only angel he knows.

Did he ever like dogs when he was alive?

Perhaps he even owned one. They’re cute to humans, and most definitely always sidle up to angels too if they come across one. But now, the only dogs that seem to like Baekhyun are the Hellhounds. Though their overly large jaws mean too much drool rains on Baekhyun whenever he nears them, so he isn’t quite sure if he likes them much, if he ever liked dogs to begin with.

Did he ever like ice cream?

The thought makes the slight smile drop from his lips to be replaced by a contemplative frown.

Maybe he was lactose intolerant when he was alive.

Jongdae’s comment sticks out in the front of his thoughts, demanding attention the same way those dogs always do.

Did he like vanilla over chocolate?

Baekhyun shakes his head, attempting to rid his head of useless thoughts that mean nothing—not when he can’t eat anymore, not when they hold no real significance in his life. He’s never getting those memories back—and yet again, for the first time in his afterlife, he finds himself agreeing with Jongdae.

What would he have done to become a demon?

Getting his memories back only means regret for whatever wrong decisions he made along his life.

The breeze blows his fully black bangs across his forehead, and he catches the loud rustle of the leaves overhead. For someone who is never influenced by the weather anymore, not being technically alive after all, he had never cared for what’s around him. The sky and the clouds and trees can do as they please, the beauty of life isn’t quite relevant to a demon.

A day of many firsts it seems, he ponders with a crooked smile resting on his lips.

  
  


Usually when Jongdae takes a child’s hand, leading them away from where they can see their mothers and fathers still kneeling by their hospital bed, they’d be wailing in his arms-- until the strange sensation of passing through the walls of the children’s hospital distracts them, until the dazzling display of Jongdae’s stunning, pure white wings makes their eyes widen and their cries trail off and replaced by their wonder.

But today, this little girl, perhaps in too much shock from it all, simply clings to Jongdae’s white shirt as he brings her through the white walls and out into the sun. She turns to look at him, her slight confusion wiped cleanly off her face once she squints at him, attempting to take in all of the glow of his skin in the sunshine.

With a gentle smile, he raises a hand that isn’t supporting the majority of her weight, letting her wrap her arms around his neck. His fingers are careful and loving as he caresses her bald head, his eyes seeping with warmth as he regards the little princess he holds against himself, wondering what her hair would have been like had she survived the treatment.

“Uncle, I feel really good today,” she murmurs in surprise, as though suddenly realising that her body doesn’t ache in every muscle and joint. There’s a lightness about her entire being, no unwelcome disease weighing her down, weakening her movements. 

“Really?” Jongdae replies, smile soft as ever as he blinks at her.

She hums, glancing down at her own fingers. “I don’t feel tired. What’s that really good smell?” she suddenly pipes up, turning her head around and glancing at the exterior of the hospital that defined the majority of her short life. “It smells really good. Can we get some?”

“Was the hospital food really bad?” Jongdae frowns, hitching her up in his arms for a steadier hold on her thin, fragile body still dressed in the drab grey gowns.

The girl shakes her head, and Jongdae finds himself smiling at the thought of carrying a little angel in his arms-- because he’s sure that’s what she will soon become. A beacon of light to guide others. “No, but I was never hungry.”

He nods, unfolding his wings, and watches as her entire face lights up with an awed gasp. She reaches out with her pale little fingers that rarely saw sunshine, confined to her room of beeping heart monitors and white walls. Though despite Jongdae’s wings being equally white as the room that enclosed her for those few years, a wide smile breaks out on her round little face upon stroking his feathers, feeling the softness under her fingertips, feeling each filament and crease of the feathers as they ruffle in the slight breeze.

“Are you an angel?” she asks with her chocolate eyes that are now so much brighter than the ones belonging to her physical body that had slipped shut forever just five minutes ago. 

“Yes, I am,” Jongdae smiles in return, eyes flickering up and landing past her. “And that uncle over there is a demon.”

She turns her head in the direction Jongdae gazes in, and stares Baekhyun down in the most innocent way possible, quietly taking in his large, spiky wings, blood red eyes and all-black attire.

“What’s a demon?” she asks, turning back towards Jongdae, even as Baekhyun steps closer.

“A person who did bad things when they were alive,” Jongdae murmurs, hazel eyes never leaving Baekhyun’s glittering red ones.

“A devilishly handsome person,” the demon adds, chuckling at the eye roll Jongdae flashes him. 

Eventually, the little girl faces Jongdae again, hugging his neck with her arms and looking up at him with her shining eyes. “Are you and demon-uncle in love?”

Jongdae blinks, jaw falling open as his eyebrows rise and rise into his blonde hair at the sheer incredulity of her words, barely registering the sounds of Baekhyun choking on his laughter in the background.

“No,” he immediately replies, a little louder than necessary. “No, no we are definitely not! Why would you think that??”

“Mummy always said opposite people fall in love,” the little girl shrugs, tone still as light as her soul despite Jongdae’s outburst. “You are opposites, aren’t you?”

“That’s why he keeps rejecting me,” Baekhyun pipes up, walking closer and giving the girl what would be a sweet smile if his red eyes didn’t glow and if he didn’t have his sharp fangs. “Stop pushing me away, Jongdae.”

“Shut up, Baekhyun,” Jongdae mutters, turning away. Why is it that Baekhyun’s smile towards the girl was so friendly but it turned into a cheeky grin so quickly when directed at Jongdae?

The girl turns to gaze up at Jongdae, a pout paired with her slightly accusatory tone. “Why do you reject him?”

Baekhyun chuckles, bending slightly to her eye-level and smiling again, stealing her attention from Jongdae. “I’m meant to be a bad guy.”

“You don’t look like one.”

Jongdae snorts. “ _ He _ doesn’t look like one?” the girl whips her face around to the angel as he scoffs again. “Don’t trust all pretty faces that smile at you.”

“You hurt me, Jongdae,” Baekhyun pouts, and Jongdae rolls his eyes as the demon leans down towards the girl again. “See? He rejects me because he’s an angel, and he thinks he’s too good to be with someone like me.”

“You shouldn’t do that, Mr Angel,” the girl turns on Jongdae with her pout still intact, and a low sigh escapes him.

With another withering look shot at the cackling demon, he hurries to send the child off, and only when the white light fades, leaving just the sunlight hitting their faces, does he turn towards the other with a scowl on his handsome features.

“You shouldn’t look at me like that,” Baekhyun chortles, lifting a hand to tap one long claw against the frown on Jongdae’s brows around his forehead. “It’s not a good look on you, pretty boy.”

There’s an instant flash of white hot anger somewhere in Jongdae’s chest, something that rained upon him so quickly he was nearly tipped over from the force of it, from the strength of the emotion that ran through his veins so spontaneously. “Why are you so bent on annoying the living daylights out of me?” Jongdae hisses between his teeth, leaning away from Baekhyun’s touch and narrowing his eyes at the demon’s slight smile.

“I’m only being sincere though,” Baekhyun cocks his head to one side, taking in the clenched jaw and the glare sent in his direction.

Jongdae backs away a few steps, lips pursed. “Fuck off,” he spits. “Stop intervening with my job.”

The demon guffaws, laughing even as Jongdae turns his back on him. “You didn’t have to go so far as to curse, you know it’ll get you in trouble,” he sing-songs, Jongdae only managing to refrain from muttering another curse under his breath as he takes off into the air, wings easily gliding in the current and lifting him toward the sky.

The moment the word left his mouth is the moment he regretted it-- the fact that Baekhyun felt the need to point out his inevitable punishment only infuriates him even more. Though only in the air, with his wings beating rhythmically and the wind running through his blonde hair, does he think that perhaps his burst of anger wasn’t the most necessary thing.

How uncharacteristic of him.

Though whiny and sarcastic, it’s rare that Jongdae truly loses his temper-- Baekhyun’s teasing was mild compared to previous incidents as well, leaving Jongdae to lose himself in pondering exactly why he had reacted so terribly to the point of swearing. Angels are needed to be pure, virtuous, perfect in everything that they do. Punishment is unavoidable.

Though he would love to blame Baekhyun for it, Jongdae sighs, knowing that he has no one to blame, especially not when he loses to a demon.

He closes his eyes against the sun, wings tilting and fluttering madly as they lower him onto a bed of cotton white, the angel sinking into a cloud.

Why is it that Byun Baekhyun always, without fault, manages to bring out the worst in him?

  
  


“Jongdae!”

With a deliberately loud huff, the angel immediately swerves, wings angling him away from the direction of the shout, knowing full well the owner of the voice. 

“Kim Jongdae!”

Jongdae's wings pick up the current beneath them, easily speeding up in his attempts to escape confrontation-- but even though he's fast, he didn't expect the other to be smarter in approaching him.

Baekhyun dives down from above Jongdae, huge black wings flapping furiously in the air with the manoeuvre in order to keep him hovering infront of Jongdae.

His breathing comes in quick huffs in the cold air so high up in the clouds, eyes looking more like a startling orange in colour with the brightness of the sunshine enveloping both of them.

And though the light makes every strand of the demon’s pitch black hair gleam, it lights up every inch of Jongdae in an indescribable way-- the way his skin itself glows under the sun, just like how Baekhyun's eyes glow in the dark, the way his pearly white wings give off a slight shimmer every time they flutter in the air. 

He watches Jongdae, watches his hazel eyes dart away, uncomfortable from Baekhyun watching him.

His voice is hard and strong, the way it always is-- but his eyes, his prettily curved eyes with those long eyelashes, give his uncertainty away.

“What do you want?” Jongdae mutters at last, sick of only the sounds of gushing air and faint bird calls between them. “You're a little far from Hell.”

Baekhyun ignores him-- which isn't unusual, when has he ever done things the angel’s way?

“I'm sorry,” he blurts, glancing up at the other and his gorgeous snowy wings gently flapping to keep him in one spot.

Jongdae blinks, dumbfounded.

“What did you just say?” he raises his eyebrows in his incredulity, blonde hair mussed in the passing wind.

And Baekhyun focuses on that instead, how the blonde strands fly in all directions, making his hair look like strands of finely spun gold silk, rather than meet Jongdae's gorgeous pair of eyes.

“I said, I'm sorry,” he murmurs again.

It takes Jongdae another few moments of dumbfounded blinking before he frowns. “Did I hear that right?”

Baekhyun huffs in annoyance, glancing away and crossing his arms over his chest. “What, so all demons have to be heartless and unfeeling now?”

“I didn’t say that,” Jongdae mutters quickly, clearing his throat-- almost as though at a loss for what to say without Baekhyun’s usual slick words and sarcasm. “I’m surprised is all.”

With a roll of his eyes, Baekhyun un-crosses his arms again, turning his face to scrutinise Jongdae under his blood red eyes. “I’m flattered you think oh-so-highly of me, Kim Jongdae.”

The corners of the angel’s lips tweak up the slightest in his usual cattish smile, the familiarity of the bite behind Baekhyun’s words allowing him to release a small sigh as his wings flutter. They were beginning to grow numb from continuously holding his weight, flapping in one spot while Baekhyun talked.

Jongdae lets himself float down to gently land on one of the larger, bigger clouds. Baekhyun only hovers closer, not daring to try his weight on the cloud-- it’ll never hold up for him. Demons belong in the underworld-- nothing in the skies will tolerate creatures from Hell. Except, perhaps, this one angel, who opens his mouth to speak again, voice uncharacteristically quiet.

“My privilege of working as a guiding angel has been revoked,” Jongdae eventually sighs, long lashes framing his gaze reaching out across the clouds. 

Baekhyun startles, face whipping towards him from where he was squinting against the light in the same direction as Jongdae. “What??” he bursts out. “Forever?”

“No, only temporarily, thank God,” Jongdae huffs, and Baekhyun breathes the slightest sigh of relief. 

Jongdae glances towards him, blinking, not sure what he expected. He knew, everyone knew, that demons cared nothing for the important work angels do to guide the newly dead to the place they deserve in Heaven-- and considering Baekhyun’s constant mockery of Jongdae treating it like a job, he certainly didn’t expect this. This concern that the demon seems to somehow have that he upset Jongdae, that it was his fault-- this is all suddenly strangely foreign again.

He allows his bright eyes to land and stay on the demon’s face, on his dainty features that are given devilish qualities in order to turn him into something more fearsome. Too many changes throws Jongdae off-balance, as though unexpected gusts of wind keep hitting against his wings.

Baekhyun has and will always be unpredictable-- but for a being who has lived on for so long in the afterlife, where there is such minimal change, the demon’s sudden consideration for him including the genuine apology, is all so, so foreign. 

But then the demon returns his glance, one corner of his lips lifting in the same infuriating smirk that reveals one sharp fang-- it all serves to confuse Jongdae even more. 

  
  


Its foreign, again, to not have Baekhyun slinking around in the shadows, silently tailing him everyday. Instead, with Jongdae wandering the human streets aimlessly, with no real purpose without needing to help the new souls, he doesn't quite mind having Baekhyun hanging around and chattering in his ear.

“Come on,” Baekhyun's grinning, leaning towards the angel from his position next to him. “Since it's technically my fault, let me take you to have fun for once in your afterlife.”

With a sharp glance in Baekhyun's direction, Jongdae huffs, pursing his lips. “Forget it.”

The demon tuts, nudging him with one spiky wing, Jongdae just managing to dodge the black, deadly sharp claw that protrudes from the edge. “You don't have anything to do anyway. I know what you do as an angel, aren't you curious at all about how I pass the days?”

“You tail me everyday, there's nothing to be curious about,” Jongdae rolls his eyes, giving the demon a scrutinising look. “Why have you become so weirdly friendly? Don't do it, it doesn't suit your image.”

“Friendliness is a two-way street,” Baekhyun huffs, corners of his lips tweaking upwards at the familiar sentence, shrugging. “You stopped snapping at me, so naturally I'm obliged to return the favour.”

It takes Jongdae a pause before he glances away from Baekhyun's sharp teeth glinting in the sunshine overhead. “You're not obliged to do anything.”

“Yes, I am,” Baekhyun grins, turning to face Jongdae again, letting their eyes meet so that his red ones could get lost in Jongdae's. Crimson and hazel mixed together only get you a darker brown, a colour far friendlier and welcoming than Baekhyun’s original demonic eyes. “If I kept up my attitude, you’d certainly berate me for it.”

Jongdae scoffs, stopping by a red brick wall and leaning against it, albeit at an angle so that the rough surface doesn’t scratch against his delicate, beautiful feathers. The demon only breathes out a slight laugh at that, shaking his head.

Carelessly, he drags his own leather wings as he slides down the brick wall to sit with his knees up against his chest, glancing up through his black hair at Jongdae’s figure above.

“Why?” Jongdae looks down the moment he hears his voice. “Does it hurt? Or are you just that pressed about your looks?”

The moment the words leave Baekhyun’s mouth, however, he pauses. 

_ Why? What’s with that look? Does it hurt? Or are you just that pressed about your looks? _

Only when the huge wave of dejavu passes does he notice Jongdae’s chuckles, otherwise ignoring his comments-- it leaves him to lower his gaze in contemplation.

The questions he had thrown out with no real bite sounded so much harsher the way he remembers-- which isn’t right.

He has no memory of his living moments.

But then, that doesn’t explain the frustratingly hammering sense of familiarity-- glancing back up at Jongdae tells him the angel doesn’t share his thoughts, his warm brown gaze focused on the people passing by instead.

The demon whips his head around, just as his ears pick up on the murmur leaving Jongdae’s lips.

“What’s that kid doing there?”

Baekhyun’s eyes navigate back away from the young boy tottering down the street, looking up at passer-bys, and back to the angel, taking note of the furrow in between Jongdae’s eyebrows that make them slant upwards in concern even more.

So heavenly, still.

The angel immediately leans away from the wall, purposeful yet weightless strides swiftly taking him towards the boy, oblivious to Baekhyun’s watchful stare.

Jongdae stands protectively right next to the boy, glancing around in ensuring no one will take him away, before kneeling on the concrete path of the street next to him.

The child, completely blind to the angel crouched next to him, glances around in his panicked state, not recognising any of the passing adults, round dark eyes flickering from one unfamiliar face to the next in his heightening anxiety.

Baekhyun stands with a low sigh, and takes a step closer, slipping into the shadows at the edge of the street along the building, the sun blocked with its tall walls. 

“It’s alright,” he hears Jongdae hum, finding the angel with his eyes shining as he peers up at the child’s distraught face. “Are you lost, sweetheart?”

Baekhyun scoffs, shaking his head in his amusement. What an idiot, talking to someone like that who can’t see or hear him. He only watches as the angel leans forward, both hands on the boy’s shoulders to brace himself, even though the child can’t feel him at all-- he pulls back away from where he pressed his lips against the boy’s forehead, slightly whispering against his skin before standing.

The kid sniffs, dragging a tiny hand over his face in a poor attempt to wipe the fat droplets of tears that had spilled over and rolled down his round cheeks in his despair. Then he’s waddling off down the road and away from Jongdae’s warmth, and yet the angel only watches, still on his knees in the middle of the sunlit pathway.

Brown eyes that remind Baekhyun of the sweet saltiness of caramel glance towards him, where he knows his red eyes are a dead giveaway even though his black clothes and wings melt perfectly into the shadows. Jongdae stands back on his feet, raising an eyebrow at him before nodding in the way the kid went.

Baekhyun wordlessly follows him, just a step behind the angel as they tail the child, standing a few steps away as they watch him run into the train station and straight into his grandmother’s arms.

Feeling Baekhyun’s red gaze on the side of his head, Jongdae lets a slight smile curve his lips. “I only planted the thought in his head. To go back to the train station.”

“Where have you been?” Baekhyun’s ears pick up the old woman’s shrill exclaim, hugging the young boy as close to her as she could. “I was about to call the police!”

Baekhyun only chuckles, thinking of the boy as he tottered obediently after a lady who he mistook for his grandmother, following her away from the train station and only realising his mistake after he’s reached a district totally unfamiliar to him.

The woman cuts her grandson’s sniffles and explanation off with another tight squeeze. And with a loud sigh, Baekhyun turns around from the scene, striding off, noticing Jongdae whip his head around before following him.

“How is it that you always know exactly what to say?” Baekhyun hums, stretching his arms over his head, feeling the sunshine pooling down onto the street warm his black hair. “Why is it that you feel the need to help everyone?”

“As if you would’ve just left a defenceless boy in the middle of the street when he was on the verge of tears,” Jongdae exclaims, eyebrows raised in his incredulity, and yet Baekhyun only sighs as he lowers his arms from the sky once more.

“Like I always say,” he gives Jongdae a side glance, catching his gaze before looking away again. “You’re too heavenly.”

“I’m an angel,” Jongdae murmurs, before letting out a huff, shrugging. “And an apparently terrible one too. Considering being ‘fired’ and all, I suppose.”

His eyes shift to the demon, and yet despite Jongdae’s mockery of his responsibility as an angel as a job, Baekhyun remains silent. 

 

Perhaps that’s why Baekhyun strangely lights up upon stumbling into Jongdae midway through guiding another recently dead person, hand on the man’s shoulder. He would have been concerned for how much of the angel’s light has infiltrated into him if he wasn’t more interested in watching the way Jongdae addresses the soul.

He creeps around the buildings lining the street the angel and the man stands in the middle of, and Jongdae’s eyes raise from the soul to land on Baekhyun’s own pair of red eyes that only seem sour and bitter like unripened mulberries in comparison to the sweet colour of Jongdae’s warm irises.

“I’m an angel, I’m-- oh, Baekhyun,” he perks up in greeting as he notices the demon before he cuts off, before quickly shaking his head. “No, sorry, my name is Jongdae, not Baekhyun,” he corrects hurriedly, Baekhyun snorting in amusement.

He makes no move to near them, simply crossing his arms over his chest as he watches Jongdae clumsily attempt to continue on with his work that he’s finally allowed to return to. 

“You’ve lived a wonderfully virtuous life, Sir,” Jongdae adds. “And now if you could come with me, we’ll go--”

“Down,” Baekhyun cuts in.

“Down to-- no!” Jongdae corrects, yet again. “Up to Heaven.”

Baekhyun’s laughing even after the soul has been sent off without another hitch, cackling with his red eyes curved into slits, fangs on complete full display despite Jongdae’s glower.

The angel steps closer, arms crossed over his chest. “And here I was thinking you’ve turned over a new leaf,” he mutters. “But the moment I get back to work is the moment you decide to follow me around just to distract me again.”

“Yup.”

“Stop it,” Jongdae snaps. “Stop doing that.”

Baekhyun grins, chuckles dying down, tilting his head as he leans further in towards Jongdae as though attempting to scrutinise every little detail on the angel’s perfect face.

Jongdae stiffens, blinking his long, fluttering eyelashes at Baekhyun, attempting to slightly inch away as Baekhyun nears, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

He opens his mouth to speak, to ask what in the world Baekhyun’s doing, before the other beat him to it.

“But I like seeing you flustered so much,” he grins, Jongdae’s eyes catching on his pointed canines as usual. “Like this.”

The angel instantly pulls away, glaring again, much to Baekhyun’s complete amusement. “It’s your fault I got so jumbled up, and you find that funny?”

“No, no,” the demon has the audacity to giggle at him, but this time Jongdae’s eyes move upwards from Baekhyun’s fangs to his curved, crescent-shaped eyes. “It’s  _ cute _ .”

“Excuse me?” Jongdae gapes, only for Baekhyun to spread his wings, taking a moment to hover above ground for a mere moment before diving under and leaving Jongdae standing in the middle of the street.

He continues to stare at the spot in the asphalt Baekhyun disappeared into, wondering where on Earth the gateway to Hell is. Considering he must fly up higher and higher into the clouds and towards the Sun for the gates of Heaven to be opened for him, he could only assume Hell is as far down into the depths of Earth as Heaven is high up in the sky. 

Jongdae only stares, blinking, attempting to imagine what the underworld looks like. Dark, grimy, echoing screams from those sinners trapped in the rows and rows of cells in the dungeons. Rows and rows of teeth too, sharp and glinting much like Baekhyun’s own fangs, that belong to the Hellhounds.

Red eyes, clusters of them like wicked stars in the dark. Sounds of scraping on the dark walls, the same sound as the spikes on Baekhyun’s wings against brick.

It makes Jongdae tilt his head contemplatively, unable to identify exactly what he feels about it, and yet unable to bring himself to scowl in disgust at the mere thought of Hell.

Though perhaps it’s Baekhyun’s sudden departure that makes him feel weird-- Jongdae has always been the one to leave the scene and the argument first, always childishly wanting to have the last word and exit in a dramatic flurry of feathers.

Change isn’t unwelcome for an immortal. Consistency is too boring, spontaneity brings colour to Jongdae’s otherwise very rhythmic everyday-- and yet this change, this change in a demon he has come to know better than he honestly should, leaves him questioning himself, and yet not knowing exactly why he’s questioning himself.

It’s a strange, paradoxical feeling that leaves him sitting on the pavement, continuing to let his thoughts run their course as he peers at the ground as though it’ll allow him to see what’s underneath.

  
  


Despite the frustration, Jongdae smiles, keeping the corners of his lips tweaked up in the same gentle, beautiful way as he nods at the man.

“I’ll see what I can do about that,” he gestures for the man to follow him. “Now if you could come with me--”

“But what about my dog?”

Jongdae blinks, plastering the smile on his face once more. “I’m sorry about your dog, but I believe a family member will take care of her.”

The man’s soul grasps onto Jongdae’s wrist, peering at the angel’s face. “Is it true that dogs can see us even as spirits? I always believed so,” Jongdae leans away from him. “Can you take me to see her again?”

“You mustn’t linger in the living realm for too long past your death,” the angel explains, attempting to brush the man’s fingers off him. “You must move on as soon as possible. Please, follow me.”

“You have to make sure she lives well,” the soul turns wide eyes on Jongdae. “I know dogs are very dependent on their human partners, I’m worried for how she’ll cope without me.”

“I know you’re concerned, Sir,” Jongdae says, evening his voice out as much as he possibly could. “But I’m afraid I can’t do much about it.”

“Can’t you at least tell her that I’m alright and to not be hung up on my death?”

Jongdae sighs, nodding slowly. “Yes, I will. Shall we get going?”

When the man pulls Jongdae back yet again, the angel visibly frowns, opening his mouth to protest. “I would like one more request.”

“Sir,” Jongdae starts, pulling his wrist out of the man’s grasp. “You aren’t supposed to have any requests granted to begin with, angels are no genies.”

He watches from the side, watches with his narrowed red eyes, focusing on Jongdae’s tense shoulders, white wings shuffling anxiously, frown replacing his usually bright, twinkling eyes.

“No,” Jongdae’s saying, shaking his head blatantly. “I don’t have the power to give you access into a living person’s dream, I’m sorry.”

Baekhyun scoffs at the soul of the man, not a shred of compliance in the way he stares back at the angel. “If you’re an angel, why are you unable to do anything?” he’s muttering, and Baekhyun’s eyes dart toward Jongdae in concern. “Shouldn’t angels be sympathetic and helpful?”

“Excuse me?”

Jongdae whips around, eyes that drip with caramel in the sun widening at the sight of the fuming demon. Baekhyun himself isn’t exactly sure what he must look like, but the snarl on his lips seems to take the soul of the man aback, too.

“You ungrateful asshole,” Baekhyun spits, crossing his arms over his chest and stepping in front of Jongdae, peering at the man with his glowing, blood red eyes. “He’s been standing there wasting his time listening to all your stupidly unreasonable requests for a solid ten minutes, how much more do you want?”

Jongdae’s mouth falls open, blinking silently at the demon shielding him with his body in shocked silence.

He just manages to jump back as Baekhyun’s wings unfurl in the blink of an eye, huge black masses of leather springing out from his shoulder blades and stretching out on either side of him. The man eyes the demon’s wings with thinly veiled surprise, flinching back as Baekhyun bares his teeth again, eyes flashing bright red in warning.

“If you don’t want to listen to him and just go, how would you like to come for a stroll in Hell with me instead?”

Baekhyun only pulls his wings back in after he watches Jongdae fade into the light with the soul, relaxing his shoulders and rolling them back as he stretches.

He makes his way into the shade under a large tree, sitting in the grass where the leaves overhead draw dappled patterns of light and dark on his black clothes. He crosses his legs, craning his neck back with his eyes closed, waiting for Jongdae to return-- because he always does, always comes back after his job to properly exchange words with the demon without anyone else in the way.

“What a rude man,” he sighs, not needing to open his eyes to feel Jongdae’s presence reappear next to him, the soft ruffling of his feathers in the slight breeze giving him away.

Jongdae starts but sits next to the demon nonetheless, releasing a small sigh of his own. “He’s just difficult is all.”

Baekhyun scoffs. “You’re saying that as if I couldn’t tell he was annoying you.”

He opens his eyes, turning his face towards the angel and watches Jongdae purse his lips, glancing away.

“He’s selfish,” Baekhyun continues, talking to Jongdae’s side profile that’s occasionally lit by moving patches of sunlight streaming down from above. “Why is he even going to Heaven?”

“Sometimes people are like that,” the angel murmurs, running a hand through his blonde strands of hair, Baekhyun’s eyes following the movement without much discretion. “They don’t want to let go of what they had in their life, which is understandable. But thank you,” he adds, upon hearing Baekhyun’s huff of disbelief.

“What, for defending you?” Baekhyun says, falling back onto the grass and squint at the leaves overhead. “You should be doing that yourself.”

With a sparkle in his eyes that crinkle at the corner with his tight-lipped smile, Jongdae turns to him, watching the shifting of Baekhyun’s eyelids as dots of light move across his face. “But you’re much scarier than I am.”

The demon hums. “And is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

He lets his eyes crack open just to turn his face and peer at Jongdae, only to be met by contemplative silence, only the rustle of leaves by the wind between them for a few long seconds.

“Both.” Jongdae shrugs as he flops down next to Baekhyun on the grass, eyelashes fluttering closed against his cheekbone. “You’re both.”

“I’m a demon,” Baekhyun laughs, eyes still tracing the outline of the angel’s sculpted profile, from his high forehead down his straight nose, pouty lips, pointed chin.

Jongdae hums, prominent adam’s apple shifting. “You must be the softest demon, then.”

  
  


“I literally do not understand you.”

Jongdae barely acknowledges the demon, wings churning the air faster as he soars over the top of tin roofs and painted brick walls.

Baekhyun groans, shoulder blades tensing with another mightier flap of his own wings in an attempt to keep up. He ignores the cat perched in a tree hissing at him as he flies past, a series of flaps of his wings allowing him to pull in right next to Jongdae in the air, glancing at the angel from his new position beside him.

“That man was such a dick,” he says over the deafening rush of air in their ears. “Why are you doing this for him?”

All of a sudden, Jongdae swerves, eyes on the ground metres below. With a glance at Baekhyun, he dives, leaving the demon to hurriedly descend in his wake, a messy and uncoordinated mess of wings and limbs in his haste.

With a loud huff, the demon lands on the grass squarely on his feet despite his awkward dive. His eyes catch on Jongdae a few steps away, before roaming over the front yard of the smaller property looming in front of him.

Not the dead man’s house, clearly. The place looks lived in, grass and hedges trimmed, shoes by the front door, even though the inhabitants of the house are not necessarily at home.

The only thing that doesn’t quite have the living factor, ironically, is the lump of golden fur splayed on the grass by the front door.

Jongdae’s inching towards it, slowly squatting by the dog, wings folding up neatly behind him. He reaches out a hand, the animal merely glancing at it before resuming its previous position on the ground, face turned away and big, brown eyes staring over Jongdae’s shoulder at nothing in particular.

“You’re an old girl,” the angel murmurs, caressing the dog’s ear flopping over its face, stroking the soft fur over and over. “You must’ve hoped that you would leave first rather than watch him leave first without you.”

Baekhyun watches, watches Jongdae’s lips curl up gently at the corners, watches the angel’s fingers slowly shift through the dog’s long fur, watches him lower his face to murmur soothing words into the golden coat.

Then the floppy ears twitch, the dog raising it’s face to look at Jongdae, properly look at Jongdae for the first time.

“Yeah,” the angel’s murmuring, the same soft look in his eyes, the same beautiful smile on his lips, directed at the dog. “He told me to tell you that he’s alright. He wants you to be happy, he’s watching over you.”

Watery brown eyes continue to stare Jongdae down, but Baekhyun’s eyes catch on the way the dog’s tail begins moving again-- slowly, but surely, swishing over the grass underfoot.

“You should live well,” the angel’s murmuring, fingers still buried in soft, golden hair. “That way you can make him happy when he’s watching you too.”

With a slight stumble, the dog clambers to her paws, a short whine leaving her as she continues to peer at Jongdae with those round eyes. The angel huffs out a laugh, quiet and melodious, reaching down to ruffle the fur at the dog’s scruff.

“That’s right,” he grins. “Good girl.”

But then the dog turns, spying Baekhyun standing at the edge of the front lawn, and immediately loses her previous good nature as she starts barking.

The demon only rolls his eyes-- this is all too familiar. He simply crosses his arms over his chest, staring right back despite the barks. Jongdae, on the other hand, immediately loops his arms around the dog, both hands on either side of her face.

“It’s alright,” he shushes, voice and strokes against the dog’s face equally soothing. “He’s a…”

The angel trails off, turning to glance at Baekhyun from over his shoulder, startling at the red eyes that drop down to meet his gaze. He pauses like that, blinking at the demon, watching the demon blink right back, nothing except the progressively quieter growls from the dog.

“He’s a friend,” Jongdae decides, turning back to the dog, leaving Baekhyun to burn holes in the angel’s delicately soft-looking blonde hair. “So he’s okay.”

Though the dog stopped the barks and growls, Baekhyun remains at the edge of the front yard, cautious from the way the dog stares him down-- until Jongdae beckons him over.

“Are you crazy?” Baekhyun spits. “She hates me.”

“Give it a go,” Jongdae murmurs, gesturing again.

Every step Baekhyun takes only seems to send the dog into a greater frenzy, glowering unblinkingly as the demon advances until Baekhyun stops right infront of her.

Jongdae juts his chin out, nodding towards the animal, light brown eyes shining as he peers up through his eyelashes. “Go for it. Pat her.”

“My hand’s going to come off.”

“You’re actually dumb,” Jongdae laughs. “You’re dead already.”

Baekhyun ignores the chortling of ‘ _ you would need to have an actual hand for the dog to bite it off _ ’ from Jongdae, slowly lowering to his knees on the grass, coming to perfect eye-level with the animal.

“Hello,” he murmurs, the dog responding with a very vague grumble, especially as Baekhyun lifts a hand. “My name is Baekhyun.”

Like that, the dog suddenly pauses his growls, regarding Baekhyun instead with a tilted face and rounded, contemplative eyes. 

“Good girl,” he tries, voice as soft as the way he remembers Jongdae’s voice sounding. “I’m here to make friends.”

He reaches out further with his hand, heart leaping into his throat upon realising the dog’s brown eyes, eyes that look oh-so-similar to Jongdae’s, remain on his face rather than his advancing hand.

Another inch forwards and his fingers just brush the incredibly soft fur on her head, Baekhyun nearly jumping out of his skin when the dog shifts, nosing into his hand to sniff. Unable to scent anything from the demon, obviously, she returns to blinking at Baekhyun’s face, and he takes it as a green light for him to slightly stroke her head.

He’s gaping, eyes lighting up at the dog and her sudden calm, daring to move his hand further down to ruffle at her ears. He risks a sideways glance to Jongdae, finding the angel watching with the widest, brightest smile painted all over his beautiful features, crinkling wrinkles along the edges of his eyes, and pulling his eyebrows upwards as he watches.

And it’s only that one moment that he took to stare at Jongdae, or perhaps longer than one moment, that he jumps at the dog attempting to lick his halted hand. Jongdae’s laughing at the wide-eyed, slack-jawed look on Baekhyun, the sound echoing all around the neat little yard, resonating even louder in Baekhyun’s ears.

“You scared me,” Baekhyun says to her innocent brown eyes, but in the next moment the dog has waddled up to him, tilting her head upwards in her attempts to lick all over his face, even though it isn’t exactly physically possible-- but Baekhyun’s giggling anyway, leaning backward in his attempts to escape her affection, only for her to move in closer, continuing to nose around his face.

He gently pushes the dog off, yet is unable to resist looping his arms around her neck as he does so, feeling nothing but soft fur and warmth beneath his palms. Thoughts that perhaps this must be what Jongdae feels like too, expanses of soft skin and feathers and warmth everywhere, leads his shining red eyes to the angel again.

And Jongdae’s only watching, the same smile on his face, the same beautiful giggles leaving his throat like bird song at the crack of dawn. And Baekhyun can’t help but flash him the same smile in return once Jongdae notices his staring.

Bright red eyes, both sharp fangs on full display, black hair flopping over his forehead from the dog messing it up earlier-- and yet Jongdae only chuckles in return, smiling eyes softening into such pretty curved slits they rival the sun overhead when paired with Jongdae’s blinding smile. 

Despite leaving the dog in its yard behind, Jongdae’s job done, the two of them spiralling up into the air again with both their respective wings flapping madly, the slight grin hanging on Baekhyun’s lips isn’t quite shaken off. With just a glance behind him at the demon, a smile of his own lights up Jongdae’s face, the angel choosing a random brick roof to slowly plonk himself on.

Baekhyun follows, folding his wings up again behind him as he sits himself on the flat surface right next to the angel.

“So we’re ‘friends’ now?” he turns to grin at Jongdae, huffing in amusement at Jongdae’s eye roll. “When did it become official?”

“Why do you need it to be official?” Jongdae groans, before turning to face Baekhyun. “Alright fine, would you like to be my friend? Yes? Wonderful.”

“Excuse me,” Baekhyun laughs, fixing his hair despite the wind blowing it out of place anyway. “Did I say I’d agree?” Jongdae turns to him, protests leaving his lips in the whiny way it always does, widening Baekhyun’s smile even further. “Alright fine, I’ll consider it.”

“That’s not fair,” Jongdae tuts, turning away. “How rude of you.”

“I’m not obliged to be nice.”

Jongdae’s sudden quiet unnerves him, prompting Baekhyun to shoot glances at the angel next to him, before his eyes are distracted by the softness of Baekhyun’s hair, glowing golden like the dog’s fur under the sun. When Jongdae speaks up after his silence, scaring the evil out of Baekhyun, the demon jumps, immediately glancing towards him.

“You told her your name,” he murmurs, leaving the demon to continue staring in thinly veiled confusion.

“Yes.”

Jongdae shifts to gaze right back at Baekhyun, brown eyes looking like liquid gold in the sun. “That’s a human feature. By stating your name, you’re associating yourself with something human.”

The demon stops, his heart nearly stopping in his chest too. And even though his heart would have indeed stopped when his physical self died, the constricting of his chest at Jongdae’s mere words make it feel so much as though his heart is on it’s way to giving out.

“The dog associates humans with anything good,” Jongdae continues, voice quiet in the wind blowing around them. He’s squinting, blonde hair whipped in his face, to continue gazing at Baekhyun, but the demon finds himself enamoured by Jongdae’s slitted eyes anyway. “And she knows you as a human...”

A small, slight curve of Jongdae’s lips leaves Baekhyun’s heart growing wings and fluttering into his throat. He’s afraid that if he opens his mouth to speak in response to the angel, he’d have his heart swooping right out as well.

“...rather than as a monster.”

Baekhyun blinks his eyes lined with black, which only serve to make his red irises even more striking, but Jongdae blinks right back, the tiny kittenish smile staying put on his face.

“Which you aren’t,” he continues, and it’s become Baekhyun’s turn to facilitate the silence that stretches between them, dumbly opening and closing his mouth like a dying fish and unable to formulate any words.

He brings his hands down on either side of himself to grip the top edge of the roof they’re sitting on as a poor attempt of grounding himself. Jongdae’s words make him feel alot like he’s flying, when he really belongs in the ground rather than up here, surrounded by sunshine and blue skies.

Blindly reaching for the roof beneath him to hold onto, Baekhyun startles upon feeling warm skin instead, immediately looking down and retracting his hand as though electrocuted as it landed on Jongdae’s hand.

He turns away, resolutely keeping his hands to himself, in an attempt to hide the reddening tips of his ears-- why are they heating up? The cool wind that whips through Baekhyun’s hair does nothing to help his blush, and Jongdae similarly glances to the side, awkwardly clearing his throat.

“You’re a good person, Baekhyun,” Jongdae mumbles in a poor attempt to revert back to the conversation rather than linger on the touch that should really have been meaningless and accidental, even though it felt like it was anything but.

  
  


It’s the same words that had fallen from Jongdae’s lips so softly that replay in Baekhyun’s ears.

“Here, boy,” he says, stretching his fingers out, giving the dog a welcoming, close-lipped smile, not wanting to risk frightening the animal by baring his teeth.

Instead of the smaller dog he was attempting to befriend, a large black nose suddenly emerges in his field of view, poking at the side of his face.

Baekhyun yelps in surprise, but the big, black and white dog only barks right back in delight, jumping on him to attempt to lick all over his face, pushing the demon down into the grass.

He ignores how utterly strange it would look to the dogs’ owners standing around the edge of the park, laughing to his heart’s content, even as multiple smaller ones join in as well, clambering all over him to nose into his hair and ears.

“Stop that,” he chuckles, ruffling the big dog’s ears and getting a face full of fur as it head butts him. “Whichever one licking my ear, stop that! It tickles!”

He manages to struggle to his knees, glancing around at the circle of irregularly sized and shaped dogs that jump around his feet from where they had been tussling in the grass on their own. And when a small, black, curly haired one leaps up into his arms, Baekhyun catches the dog with a little exclaim of surprise, but holds it close to his chest regardless. The puppy seems to pause upon seeing Baekhyun’s large fangs, unable to contain his wide smile, but then she’s leaning her face up, sniffing around Baekhyun’s mouth with no other intention than simple curiosity.

_ “You’re a good person, Baekhyun.” _

The demon lets a smaller, gentler smile land on his lips and not leave as he holds the puppy, sitting on the grass and playing with the ones that decide to crowd around.

“You all used to hate me,” he murmurs to a big white one that has decided to claim the spot on the grass right beside Baekhyun. “How did it all change?”

But then the barking of another one catches his attention, the dog attempting to catch Baekhyun’s darting fingers as he plays with it, completely unafraid of being bitten.

With his hand buried in the fluffy coat of a dog rolling in the grass right beside him, Baekhyun gazes upwards towards the skyline instead, thinking of blonde locks that must be just as soft. He allows his mind to drift, landing on the brief moment of feeling the angel’s soft skin beneath his fingertips, as he strokes the ear of a dog. 

He shakes his head, futile attempts to shake Jongdae out of his thoughts what he’s unable to make sense of. Baekhyun is always one to dismiss things that don’t make sense to him-- but why is it that he just can’t let go of the thoughts that confuse him so much?

It makes no sense. Jongdae’s lingering presence in the back of his mind makes no sense, and the way he follows Jongdae without being asked to makes even less sense.

With a sigh, he lies on his back in the grass, squinting against the sun to gaze up at the blue sky, white clouds that look so similar to Jongdae’s wings-- such pretty skies, he contemplates.

So pretty, but so hostile towards him.

A big furry head interrupts his thoughts, blocking out the sun as it hovers over his face, putting the grin back on his lips as he reaches up to stroke the dog’s cheek.

He wishes so much to be able to tell himself to forget it, move on, don’t let it bother him-- but only now does he notice that method never seems to work with Jongdae.

 

\- 

 

Jongdae glances up at the demon, Baekhyun feeling his eyes on the side of his face.

“Where are we going?” he pipes up after a few moments, whining childishly at Baekhyun’s shrug.

Despite Jongdae’s tugging on Baekhyun’s clothes, the demon remains silent, leading Jongdae through the streets-- because as he expected, the angel’s eyes absolutely light up upon landing on the park.

With a little happy gasp, Jongdae runs off, immediately gathering a crowd of dogs-- not quite the same ones that had entertained Baekhyun that other afternoon, but ones that greet the demon too, nonetheless.

Baekhyun’s eyes linger on Jongdae, though.

The angel’s laugh bubbles right out of his throat, burying his nose in the long fur of a dog nearby, hugging it right around its neck.

He’s cooing, stroking the snout of another, and Baekhyun belatedly realises the soft smile tugging up his own lips, quickly plastering a look of indifference back on his face in time for Jongdae turning around.

He grins, bright and wide, and it takes all of Baekhyun’s willpower to not replicate it right back at him.

He kneels on the grass instead, ruffling the fur of one or two dogs he recognises as they bound past in their little chasing game. Baekhyun watches them run past, smile still hanging on them as they roll around together, mock fighting-- he barely noticed Jongdae making his way towards him until he’s sitting beside him on the grass with a small sigh.

“You’ve gotten so much better with dogs,” the angel’s saying, and Baekhyun finds Jongdae with a cute little smile hanging on his lips when he turns to look at him.

Baekhyun doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but the mumble leaves his lips either way. “Thanks to you.”

Jongdae’s giggling, bumping his shoulder against Baekhyun’s from his spot right next to the demon. But then he’s gasping like he’s just been shoved aside, eyes widened-- Baekhyun turns to him immediately, searching his face with his eyes as well as his hands, careful with his long black nails against Jongdae’s flawless, beautiful skin.

“Jongdae?” he tilts his head to look into the angel’s eyes, finding him seemingly blinking back into reality. “Jongdae, are you alright?”

The angel’s eyebrows slowly furrow, forehead creasing in his apparent confusion. One of his hands come up to hold the shoulder that had playfully bumped into Baekhyun’s, gaze set somewhere behind Baekhyun.

“That felt really… weird,” he hums, leaving the demon to similarly frown in confusion.

“Weird? In what way?”

“It felt like you knocked me away with your shoulder, but obviously that’s not it…” Jongdae trails off, before shaking his head. “I could just be imagining it though.”

Baekhyun continues to gaze at Jongdae’s side profile, absolutely unconvinced, even as a big furry thing climbs right into Jongdae’s lap, bringing the blinding smile right back on his face. 

But though he’s unconvinced, what could he do about it? He’s as puzzled and bewildered as the angel, and with no viable explanation in sight on the horizon, it leaves him with no other choice but to let the matter slide, for the time being.

 

But this time, Baekhyun’s certain it’s no random coincidence, or part of either of their imaginations.

Baekhyun gazes across the street, watching as the angel speaks to another lost-looking new soul.

He leans against the trunk of a tree, eyes on the prettily folded white wings, on the angel’s blonde strands of hair, on his prominent shoulder blades and biceps that flex beautifully when he moves.

He’s tempted to leave-- but then is struck by the thought that no, never has he managed to leave after spying Jongdae.

The realisation keeps him rooted to the spot, eyebrows furrowing under his messy black hair flopping over his forehead, mind whirling with every incident ever where he had met Jongdae.

Not once was he able to walk off and leave the angel alone.

So this time, again, he goes along the pull toward Jongdae, unwilling to fight upstream against it.

“Hey,” he whispers right against Jongdae's ear after the angel is left alone, having sent off the newly deceased soul.

Jongdae yelps, jumping about a foot into the air in his shock, whirling around to face Baekhyun's wide grin and loud, boisterous laughter.

“You scared me,” Jongdae whines loudly, much to Baekhyun's amusement, still continuing to laugh despite Jongdae's protests.

The angel lightly slaps Baekhyun's bicep, and that's what immediately halts his laughter so abruptly that Jongdae blinks in surprise.

It’s almost like when Jongdae acted as though Baekhyun knocked into him when they had only lightly bumped shoulders at the park-- it’s almost like Baekhyun mistook Jongdae’s light smack for a hard hit, aimed to sting and hurt.

And it’s almost like Baekhyun could nearly feel how the contact stung-- but feel it as though it’s a faraway, faded sort of feeling.

He blinks, eyes refocusing on Jongdae’s brown eyes, rounded in concern as they peer back at him.

Baekhyun lets his lips part, searching in the mess of his mind for the right words. “That felt really weird,” is what he manages to settle on, taking note of the way Jongdae’s eyebrows raise the slightest, undoubtedly upon remembering those words that was uttered by himself not too long ago.

And the only way Baekhyun could think of to describe the feeling was that he had felt it before-- he had felt it, a long time ago. And only as a memory is he able to feel it now, again.

He takes a small step backwards, mind swimming with possibilities and denials, angels and devils arguing over his thoughts. Jongdae frowns at this, stepping forwards to close the gap Baekhyun subconsciously widened between them, warm eyes still searching Baekhyun’s face.

The demon shoots Jongdae a small smile, eyes shifting away from the angel’s features, because how does that make any sense? A memory? In what alternate universe?

Baekhyun lightly shakes his head, as though to rid himself of the thoughts that otherwise wouldn’t stop nagging at the front of his mind.

All he knows is being a demon-- all Jongdae knows is being an angel.

He risks gazing into Jongdae’s irises, risks letting his eyes rest on the pretty, hazel colour. It makes him wonder what Jongdae’s thinking-- it makes him wonder whether Jongdae ever wanted to regain his memories.

And that’s what he voices, never one to bottle up thoughts in his skull. “Have you,” Baekhyun murmurs, words tripping and stuttering out of his mouth. “Ever wanted to get your memories back?”

Jongdae blinks, quiet for a moment.

Any person, sinner or saint, will no longer remember any aspect of their life upon death, upon entering the afterlife. It’s the only similarity between the two of them, two creatures who would otherwise be so different it’s no wonder they repelled each other at first.

So Baekhyun tilts his head as he regards Jongdae, as Jongdae thinks for a few more heart beats.

“I think so,” is what Jongdae eventually responds with, voice as bright as the way he glances back up to meet Baekhyun’s eyes again. “I suppose I’m curious,” he smiles, and Baekhyun’s eyes drop down to the crinkles at Jongdae’s eyes, the way those eyes also seem to smile just as much as Jongdae’s prettily curved lips.

“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, as well,” Baekhyun chuckles, turning away, finally. He starts off down the street, confident the angel would be following right on his heel.

“What, because I have no sins to be ashamed of?” Jongdae pipes up from just behind him, and Baekhyun’s small smile only widens. No matter how strange it sounds, he’s somehow become reliant on the way the angel is always pulled after him-- perhaps because it’s so similar to the way Baekhyun’s drawn to him that it makes him feel a whole lot less alone.

He lets his silence serve as sufficient answer for Jongdae. Even if he may or may not regret it, all Baekhyun wants is those memories, returned to him in one piece. Even if it means he lives for the rest of eternity in shame and guilt for whatever crimes he committed, if it means he would be able to make sense of the strange sparks, flashes, between him and Jongdae then it would still be worth it.

  
  
  


“What is ‘good’?”

Jongdae turns, raising both eyebrows high into his blonde strands of hair that fall gently over his forehead.

Baekhyun huffs out a laugh, leaning back to rest his palms on the tiled roof beneath them and feeling Jongdae's eyes on him. The bricks, though hard, are warmed so well by the overhead sun, which still shines down upon them. At this height, looking out over the rooftops around them, it means their hair is whipped around in the air, and they’re both squinting in the sunshine.

“What would you call ‘good’?” he repeats, angling his face towards the angel and blinking slowly at him, catching Jongdae's gaze perfectly in his own. “The word is hanging off everyone's mouths all the time and yet each one of us has a total different definition of it.”

Jongdae only hums after a heart beats pause, letting his eyes stray  from the demon’s handsome features, glittering red eyes and all, to the endless stretch of blue skies and white clouds instead. “You sound like you have a problem with being lumped into the ‘not good’ category,” he murmurs softly, but Baekhyun's breath catches on every syllable all the same.

“Not too much,” Baekhyun hums, letting out a breath into the air that has been growing steadily colder and colder. Though they don't feel the bite of the wind even when they fly, and their noses don't turn red and their eyes don't water in the chilly mornings and night, Baekhyun likes to think of how contrastingly warm Jongdae is.

Everything about him. From his chocolatey eyes to his gentle smile, from his every touch to the colour of his hair, from his soft skin to his even softer feathers.

“I mean, it must have been justified, whatever I did.” he turns his face to watch Jongdae again, bored from looking out at the living world. The angel’s beauty is much more captivating. “How I sinned.”

What takes him aback, however, is how directly Jongdae turns to gaze right back, unflinchingly, right into his eyes. “But I'm dissatisfied. I think you're undeserving of Hell.”

“You don't know that,” Baekhyun breathes, only to be cut off.

“Gluttony,” Jongdae blinks, eyebrows raised in a silent challenge. “Is that you?”

Baekhyun frowns the slightest, but Jongdae doesn't wait for him to respond.

“Greed,” he tilts his head to regard Baekhyun. “Sloth?” he continues, with a small shake of his head. “No matter how I look at it, I don't see any of those in any part of you.”

The angel lifts his fingers, as though counting off the seven deadly sins, the demon only watching on in helpless silence.

“Pride?” Jongdae pauses, before chuckling. “You do have a little bit of an arrogant air about you, honestly. But envy? Wrath?” he shakes his head, the smile remaining on his lips. “Never.”

But then Jongdae stills in thought, eyes still roaming Baekhyun's face even throughout his silence.

And when he eventually does speak, the whisper that floats out of his lips is so similar to the nagging voice at the back of Baekhyun's mind that he nearly misses Jongdae's words altogether.

“Lust?” Jongdae whispers, watching as the demon blinks frantically, and yet is unable to drag his eyes away from Jongdae's face. “Is that it?”

Baekhyun's lips part, attempting to formulate a response,  _ any _ response-- but then Jongdae's suddenly surging forward, cupping Baekhyun's jaw with one hand, lips pressed against Baekhyun's.

He's mouthing gently, softly, like how absolutely everything about Jongdae is so soft, at Baekhyun's lips, and Baekhyun melts right into Jongdae's mouth, letting his lips fall open even further. It allows the angel to slightly suck on Baekhyun's bottom lip, eyelashes fluttering against Baekhyun's cheekbone, pressing continuous open-mouthed kisses against Baekhyun's lips.

“What does that make me then?” Jongdae whispers amidst kisses, voice hushed in between the sounds of their lips separating before joining again.

Rather than respond, Baekhyun only tilts his face further, taking Jongdae's lips within his own this time, absolutely delighting in the quiet sigh that leaves the angel at that.

He's wrapping both arms around Jongdae's neck, tangling his fingers in the blonde hair that he's been itching so much to touch, feeling Jongdae's fingers that are still lingering on his cheek warm his skin right through. He pulls him in closer with his hands on the back of Jongdae's neck, pulls him in closer to kiss him deeper, tilting his head further.

He wasn't exactly expecting Jongdae's tongue, licking along his lips between kisses, but he welcomed it immediately nonetheless, letting it lick into his open mouth.

But once Jongdae's tongue finds Baekhyun's, the fight for dominance that really looks more like a choreographed dance leaves both of them panting, holding each other tight, refusing to let go-- refusing to lose to the other.

It reminds Baekhyun of two boys, two stubborn, overly prideful and equally sarcastic boys. Always arguing-- but falling, in reality. The walls they’ve both built up falling. One of them falling from the sky, the other falling into the other’s arms. Falling for each other.

Jongdae whines the slightest, eyebrows furrowed, with Baekhyun sucking on his tongue-- but then its Baekhyun's turn to gasp out loud, gripping Jongdae's hair tighter in his fists when Jongdae carefully bites on Baekhyun's bottom lip, running his tongue over the demon’s fangs.

He pulls back the slightest, eyes still closed with his long eyelashes still beautifully fanned across his cheekbones, mapping out Baekhyun's teeth with his tongue, licking along the gums and the roof of Baekhyun's mouth. Baekhyun hangs tight onto him, every move of Jongdae's tongue sending his entire body flying with sparks of fire yet shivering with anticipation somehow at once. 

And just like he thought, every part of Jongdae is warm-- the fast breaths across Baekhyun’s face when they pull away for a short moment’s pause, the back of Jongdae’s neck where Baekhyun’s fingers are lightly stroking, Jongdae’s mouth, Jongdae’s tongue.

And the warmth is missed oh so dearly when Jongdae pulls away, still hovering in Baekhyun’s space, lips still just an inch from Baekhyun’s. The demon blinks, eyes barely managing to focus on Jongdae’s face, he’s so close. And yet the angel’s eyes are still closed as though attempting to savour what they had shared, and Baekhyun’s eyes drop to focus on Jongdae’s reddened, kiss-swollen lips, undeniable evidence.

“What was that for?” Baekhyun murmurs, when he finally finds the remains of his voice, left-over morsels that hadn’t been sucked right out of his mouth. His words come out hushed and raspy, rough at the edges, however, and Jongdae’s lips quirk up in apparent amusement.

He shrugs. “I wanted to kiss you.”

Baekhyun takes a moment, but grins, glancing to the side and feeling the sun warm the crown of his head, the heat seeping right into his pitch black hair.. “Why does that sound like something I would say?”

“Because you’re a bad influence,” Jongdae giggles quietly, shuffling forward until he’s resting his face on Baekhyun’s shoulder, leaning against him.

Baekhyun huffs, recognising the obvious joking words in Jongdae’s light tone the way a human would be able to recognise their own shadow. He doesn’t ask any more, only silently reaches out to grasp Jongdae’s hand in his own.

He gazes down at their linked fingers, Jongdae’s shorter and thicker, more boyish than his own thin, elegant ones. But despite Jongdae’s hands being rougher, the warmth emanating from his palm right into Baekhyun’s skin is unrivaled.

He chances a glance down at the angel nestled into his side, finding Jongdae gazing down at their palms pressed against each other’s with a similar look in his eyes, a kind of quiet wonder and appreciation for yet another one of their differences-- but this time, the differences in their hands allow them to fit together that much better.

And thinking about it, perhaps that’s the true reason behind the contrast between them-- one a creature of darkness, the other an embodiment of light. One at home in the clouds, feathered wings as pure white as the clouds with a smile that puts the sun itself to shame-- and yet the other one rises from underneath the ground to melt perfectly in the shadows. Differences, they’re all differences.

But as Baekhyun thumbs across the back of Jongdae’s hand, he absentmindedly entertains the thought that it’s the differences that brings them together, like their hands.

  
  


For once in his afterlife, Jongdae doesn’t miss life. Being dead is suddenly the best thing that has ever happened to him-- being invisible to living people, being alone in the world of the living.

All remnants of hatred for his job, requiring him to remain on Earth as a guiding angel, have long evaporated into the sunshine pooling down around them. If he wasn’t on Earth, he would have had no chance of meeting the demon.

One of them in the sky, one of them in the underworld, creates no chances of their paths crossing the way they did, and yet they find themselves curled up together in the shade of a large tree, cuddled up to each other on a wooden park bench, ignored by the people passing by. Jongdae’s head rests against Baekhyun’s shoulder, the demon’s head similarly leaning against Jongdae’s-- sitting together, pressed into each other’s sides, everywhere from their shoulders to their hands and thighs touching each other.

It’s peaceful like this, being dead. He’s able to crane his head up to press a lingering kiss on Baekhyun’s lips without worrying about strange looks passerbys would shoot them, Baekhyun able to play with Jongdae’s fingers without fearing judgemental glances aimed at them. 

Jongdae hums, a soft, satisfied smile lifting the corners of his lips, eyes closing against the sun. Baekhyun glances at the angel, running his eyes over delicate facial features, pink lips, dewy skin. His blonde hair lightly tickles the side of Baekhyun’s face, but the demon’s eyes drop to Jongdae’s wings behind him, hanging loose from Jongdae’s shoulder blades with how relaxed the angel is.

The feathers ruffle slightly in the breeze that briefly blows past, looking as though each filament of every feather is spun out of the wisps of clouds in the sky overhead.

So he can’t help but reach out, the tips of his long, elegant fingers lightly grazing the feathers closest to him. Jongdae straightens a little at the touch, briefly glancing over his shoulder and watching Baekhyun’s fingers stroke one particularly long feather. Jongdae’s eyes drift to Baekhyun’s face, not sure exactly what it is on his features that he’s looking for-- and yet he finds himself flushing lightly at the way the demon’s gaze is focused so entirely on his wings.

No words need to be spoken for Baekhyun to voice his appreciation, so the back of Jongdae’s neck and the tips of his ears burn a subtle red all the same, Baekhyun’s touch moving from the longer feathers at the edge of Jongdae’s wings to the fluffier down at the base of where the feathers sprout from his back. 

The demon hums, a quiet note leaving his throat, fingers skimming over the slope of the top edge of the wing closest to him. “How come it’s so soft?” he murmurs, and Jongdae shrugs, the wings shifting with his shoulders moving.

“Yours must be rough then,” he pipes up, shuffling closer on the seat and leaning forwards.

He reaches out with his fingers over Baekhyun’s shoulder and Jongdae’s eyes light up entirely, taken aback by the coarse texture of leather that looks so smooth. With a quiet gasp in his awe, Jongdae lets his hands wander, finding the wrinkled, jagged edges of Baekhyun’s wings even sharper and rougher than he had expected. 

“Why are there rips?” he glances up to meet Baekhyun’s red eyes, fingers grazing the breaks in the black, leathery stretches of skin that makes up his wings.

The demon shrugs, flashing Jongdae a crooked grin. “They were just like that.” he watches as Jongdae thumbs over the clawed tips of the wings, feeling the bone jutting out along the top edge.

Jongdae’s eyes jump to Baekhyun’s shoulder blades, where the wings stick out from the tears in the black shirt the demon wears. The bone that stretches out to form the structure of the wings integrate seamlessly into the flesh and bone of Baekhyun’s back, Jongdae running his fingers along that junction at Baekhyun’s shoulder blades with unconcealed awe.

But then Baekhyun’s turning his body away from Jongdae, leaving him blinking in confusion for a short moment before the demon swoops down, gently pressing his lips against Jongdae’s.

Despite being caught off guard, an automated smile rests on Jongdae’s lips, eyelids immediately slipping shut at the feeling of Baekhyun’s velvety lips. His arms move upwards to brace himself against the demon’s chest, one hand resting further up at Baekhyun’s neck, allowing Jongdae to vaguely register the jumping of the vein against Baekhyun’s throat as the demon tilts his head further.

Jongdae lets his lips fall open, shuffling closer in search of more and more of Baekhyun’s warmth, mouthing slowly at Baekhyun’s lips simultaneously. There’s the feeling of warm breath hitting his wet lips when Baekhyun briefly pulls away for air before the demon’s leaning back in, kissing Jongdae’s bottom lip just as gently as he had been before.

“Ah--” Jongdae breaks off with a sharp gasp, a hand flying up to his lip on pure instinct.

Baekhyun’s eyes snap open, immediately frowning in concern, leaning closer to peer at Jongdae’s lip. “Jongdae?” he murmurs. “Did-- did I bite you?”

“No, I think it’s just your fangs,” Jongdae scrutinises the finger that he pressed against his lip. It’s impossible for a dead person with no real physical body to bleed, of course, but the short-lived pinch of pain from his lip was definitely very much real. “Just a little graze.”

He turns to smile in his usual eye-crinkling, world-brightening way, but the furrow of Baekhyun’s eyebrows don’t smooth out.

He moves a hand slowly upwards, fingers reaching out to gently prod at Jongdae’s lip himself. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “Does it still hurt?”

“Of course not, silly,” Jongdae chuckles. “What are you apologising for?”

For not being careful, perhaps. Baekhyun’s eyes drift upwards from Jongdae’s lips to Jongdae’s eyes, glinting brown eyes, searching in them and only seeing himself reflected in there. For having stupid sharp teeth?

It all comes right back to being a sinner. Then perhaps it’s too late for Baekhyun to be sorry. He may have been spared if he had shown remorse when he was alive, regret for whatever horrible decisions he made. It’s no use to be sorry for his mistakes, sorry for being a demon, only now.

But he leans forward to land a shorter, softer, gentler kiss on Jongdae’s lips regardless. He pulls back, waiting for Jongdae to open his eyes so that he could continue peering into them.

“Still, I’m sorry,” he smiles, feeling his heart flip around backwards in his ribcage at Jongdae’s chuckle that accompanies his eye roll.

“Stupid,” the angel whispers into the space between them. A short stillness settles over their heads, both breathing in each other’s air, faces barely an inch apart. “Apology accepted,” Jongdae eventually adds.

The audible smile in Jongdae’s voice makes Baekhyun all the more eager to peck the angel’s lips again, just one more time.

  
  
  


Baekhyun leans forward, pressing the fastest, most fleeting kiss to the angel’s ear before drawing back, giggling as Jongdae jumps. He whirls around, smile wide on his face and red sitting high on his sharp cheekbones even as Baekhyun continues to laugh, one hand cupped over the ear Baekhyun had kissed.

“Yah, what was that for?” he cries, loud voice carrying perfectly through the air, and Baekhyun only snorts again at the slight shrill tone in Jongdae’s voice whenever he raises it.

Instead of replying, Baekhyun simply moves close enough to loop an arm around Jongdae’s arm, grinning. But no matter how brightly he smiles, there’s still absolutely no way he’d rival the angel’s brilliance, especially not when he laughs the way Baekhyun loves.

“No more dead people for today?”

Jongdae giggles, shaking his head and allowing the demon to pull him down the street, uncaring of the humans milling about, walking past them. With a glance at their interlinked arms, Baekhyun lets his own slip downwards so that his hand slides against Jongdae’s before he grabs it, slotting their fingers together.

Casting his gaze next to him again, Baekhyun only chuckles at the way the corners of the angel’s lips curve right up at the silent gesture. He raises the index finger of his free hand that isn’t taken by Jongdae’s hand just to poke the corner of Jongdae’s mouth, the kittenish curl that his lips form absolutely fascinating and so adorable that he finds it difficult to keep his hands to himself.

Jongdae snorts, half heartedly slapping Baekhyun’s hand away, leaning further into the demon’s chest as they stroll down the pathway, dappled shadows shifting on the cement underfoot from the leaves overhead. “What was that for?” he says, a slight pout on his lips that jut right out, and a whinge in his tone, voice high.

“You’re so whiny,” Baekhyun rolls his eyes, but leans forward to kiss the pout right off Jongdae’s lips regardless.

The angel’s restraining his smile behind his lips the best he could when Baekhyun pulls away, tight-lipped grin still curving his eyes so that it almost looks like even his eyes are smiling. So even though Jongdae tries not to let his smile spread all the way to his ears, the shine of his eyes is more than enough to light up his entire face.

He purses his lips, quietly clearing his throat. “You used to call me such mean things.”

Baekhyun’s chuckling under his breath in his amusement, eyes still trained on Jongdae’s adorably curved lips, glistening under the sun from the kiss that was planted on them rather than their usual slightly chapped look. “Calling you whiny isn’t mean, it’s the truth. You are whiny.”

Jongdae scoffs, rolling his eyes at Baekhyun before stepping forwards again, pulling the demon along. “I meant that you used to say it in a much worse way, you know.”

Baekhyun hums thoughtfully, fingers curling tighter around Jongdae’s. “Did I?”

The angel hums, casting a glance pointedly at the demon next to him. “I remember you saying the exact same thing, but in a mean way.”

Baekhyun pauses, blinking rapidly. “When was that?”

The angel’s steps slow, shadows from overhead dotting across Jongdae’s face as they stop beside the trunk of a roadside tree, Jongdae leaning one shoulder against it as he frowns contemplatively. In the gaps between the leaves that allows the sun to shine down on them, Jongdae’s skin glows in those patches, his hair looking like pure gold. Baekhyun lets a slight smile softly curve his own eyes as he watches the shadows of the leaves dance across the angel’s stunning features, highlighting the slope of his brows, the curve of his cupid’s bow.

“Not sure,” Jongdae mumbles. “But I do remember you calling me whiny, and you sounding like an asshole.”

Baekhyun laughs, leaning forwards to nestle his face in the crook of Jongdae’s neck. A moment’s pause, and he feels the tickling of Jongdae’s eyelashes against his own neck, the angel similarly resting his face on Baekhyun’s shoulder to return the embrace. 

“I’m always an asshole,” Baekhyun murmurs against Jongdae’s skin, wondering briefly if he would be able to feel Jongdae’s pulse beneath the skin that his lips meet if they were alive.

“What does that make me, then?” Jongdae chuckles, and Baekhyun shivers the slightest at the short breaths of air hitting his skin, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand upright.

“You’re an angel,” Baekhyun protests. “How does that make any sense?”

“You’re not making any sense either,” Jongdae scoffs. “Does it matter what I am and what you are?”

Baekhyun lets his lips curve up, eyelids fluttering closed against Jongdae’s neck. Do technicalities matter any more? No, not since they discovered they seem to fit together better than they belonged in Heaven or Hell.

“If you ask me, the fact that you’re a demon is what makes the least sense.”

With a light chuckle, Baekhyun wraps his arms around Jongdae’s waist, tugging the angel closer, enough for him to feel the angel’s sturdy chest against his own, allowing him to bury his nose further into Jongdae’s neck, resting his head just underneath Jongdae’s perfectly sculpted jawline. The winding of Jongdae’s arms around his back lights up Baekhyun’s face in a wider smile, and he could feel rather than see Jongdae mirror the expression against his own neck. 

  
  
  


“Do you see that?”

Jongdae follows the direction Baekhyun points in, squinting into the distance.

Though sitting on top of a house, at a high vantage point, means they can see for miles on either side of them, the figure Baekhyun’s pointing out is so small Jongdae could barely make it out until they head down the street towards them.

Jongdae sighs, breathing in deeply. “That looks good.”

“I know right?” the demon pouts, watching the chicken delivery man walk past the house they sit ontop of, the smell of the freshly cooked chicken in the bags in his hands still so strong despite how far up they are in the air. “The only thing I miss about living is food. I walk around and want to eat everything,” he groans, and Jongdae barks out a loud, high pitched laugh.

“It almost feels like I’m hungry,” the angel adds. “But really it’s just cravings. When they took away our hunger, they should’ve taken away our appetites too.”

“The amount of food I crave,” Baekhyun groans, leaning back on his hands, palms flat against the brick roof underneath them.

Though perhaps that could be a positive to being dead-- he feels none of the heat of the roof that was warmed fully by the morning sun that has now disappeared behind masses of clouds. And Jongdae, always walking on burning asphalt with his bare feet, would not have fared so well if all their senses were still intact.

Jongdae lets his eyelids slip shut, feeling the breeze carry through his hair, long blonde strands falling messily back into place.

On the other hand, however, with no physical bodies anymore, it’s impossible to influence their surrounding environments in any way. Baekhyun sticking a finger in a puddle of water would not create ripples, Jongdae walking on sand would not find a trail of his footprints trailing behind him if he looked back over his shoulder.

Just as Baekhyun’s eyes lift to the grey skies above them and the thick clouds overhead, the wind picks up and Jongdae takes a huge lungful of air in.

“Rain,” he murmurs.

And sure enough, they don’t sit there for much longer before a light smattering of droplets fall down upon them, gradually wetting the pavement underneath the roof they sit on. Though both are undisturbed by the rain, the drops falling right through their non existent bodies, Jongdae takes Baekhyun’s hand in his, pulling him into the shelter of a large tree on the other end of the roof.

Baekhyun looks down, down at their feet walking in a line along the top edge of the roof, down at their hands that now join so naturally, clasping around each other’s fingers. 

“I like this weather,” Jongdae hums, hearing a questioning tilt in the murmur that responded from beside him.

“But it’s so grey,” Baekhyun says, taking a seat on the edge of the roof a moment after Jongdae sits down too, their legs dangling off in mid air. Though neither wet or cold, it’s much easier to see infront of them and see each other without their visions filled with nothing but rain. The angel could feel his gaze resting on the side of his face without needing to lift his eyes from where he’s peering down at the ground to look at the demon sitting beside him. “There’s no sun when it rains.”

“So you like sunshine?” Jongdae raises his eyebrows, blinking lazily at the demon from the corner of his eye. 

Baekhyun chuckles, shuffling closer to lean against the angel’s shoulder. Though undefinable, the sense of belonging has never left. The sense that this is right, in all the strangely wrong ways, has never left ever since the fateful sunny day on that exact same rooftop. Caging what they have between them under a label could in fact ruin the peaceful beauty that they share now, Jongdae far preferring this nameless, unofficial spark between them that makes him feel so ironically alive.

Baekhyun huffs, redirecting his gaze to their feet, idly swinging from the edge of the roof. How could that be, when the sound of rain is so soothing? The pattering on the roof around them, and the quieter dripping of water onto the leaves above them fills the otherwise quiet air between them, Baekhyun taking in a long breath of the smell of fresh earth.

“No,” Baekhyun murmurs. “You shine more in sunshine.”

Jongdae rolls his eyes, groaning. “Since when were you so cringey?”

“I was always cringey,” Baekhyun mumbles, lifting his gaze up to rest on Jongdae’s face, giggling.

His fangs peek out between his lips, and Jongdae’s eyes drop to him, taking in Baekhyun’s perfectly pearly, straight teeth before his eyes stray. His lips, as smooth and soft as they always look, stretch into such thin lines whenever Baekhyun gives him that wide, square smile, a smile so brilliant that his red irises disappear completely with how curved his eyes become. 

Jongdae remembers leaning against a street sign post and watching as a man dressed immaculately in a fitted suit fiddled with his watch, nervous gaze that snapped from here to there. He was playing with the silk ribbon tied around a large bouquet of red roses, every flower in the entire bunch looked fresh and delicate and more mesmerising the longer Jongdae observed them. Gazing at Baekhyun’s smile now, Jongdae can’t help but return it.

Rose red, not blood red.

When Jongdae looks away, it’s Baekhyun’s turn to allow his eyes to roam freely, tilting his head to take in all of the angel’s absolutely stunning features.

He raises a finger, poking Jongdae’s cheek and feeling the hard edge of the angel’s prominent cheekbone. “What’re you thinking about?”

Jongdae opens his mouth, but not to respond.

All of a sudden he’s not seeing the rain dripping from green leaves, he’s not seeing the surface of the puddles below them ripple with the passing of light breezes.

Suddenly, he’s seeing an alleyway stretching infront of him.

And there’s Baekhyun-- he feels the poke on his cheek, but it’s not quite the same.

He doesn’t really feel it, in fact, because he feels the thudding impact of knuckles against his face in that same exact spot in the middle of his cheek. He feels his face whip to the side from the force of it, and he feels every muscle in his face scream in complaint as he screws his eyes shut, gasping in pain.

Jongdae looks up, a hand cupping his cheek. His eyes land on Baekhyun’s red eyes widened in a swirling mixture of shock and confusion-- but then the red darkens into a dark brown. Dark brown, the colour of a living man’s irises.

The Baekhyun Jongdae’s suddenly seeing now is scoffing, neither of his canines elongated into the fangs that they are now. This Baekhyun, the Baekhyun before he died, is laughing, chuckling as he rests his hands on his hips, peering down at Jongdae, nothing but mockery in glinting brown eyes. 

But then Jongdae’s vision swims again, and he blinks rapidly to find himself face to face with the demon once again, red eyed and fanged and all-- and this time, it’s not just him that felt weird. 

Yes, it was something that he felt. The impact of Baekhyun’s fist against his cheek felt too real to be imagined-- but the image was so, so vivid. So vivid as though Jongdae has actually seen it before.

As though he has been there before, punched in the face by Byun Baekhyun, with the latter bending over him and laughing at his pain.

Almost as though he remembers it.

Jongdae’s eyes shift, catching onto Baekhyun’s red ones-- and now in another dizzying whirl, he’s seeing Baekhyun’s familiar figure, slipping crumpled 1000 won notes in the back pocket of faded jeans. His jet black, leathery wings are nowhere to be seen, the man dressed in a black hoodie instead, runners on his feet and one or two rings glinting on his pretty fingers.

And it’s like Jongdae  _ remembers  _ how he had run up to Baekhyun, grabbing him by the collar of his hoodie and slammed him into the closest wall of the street. It’s almost like he remembers spitting  _ “manipulative bastard” _ in Baekhyun’s face, demanding for the money Baekhyun had just scammed to be returned.

He’s dizzy, head spinning from a sudden rush as though a bucket of water had been upturned over his head, and now the only thing he could make out in the chaos of his mind is Baekhyun’s red eyes-- red eyes stretched impossibly wide, much like what Jongdae’s own expression must be. Eyes blinking in shock, reeling in the confusion of the series of images that flashed through his mind, lips parted in a silent gasp.

“What,” Baekhyun whispers, voice cracking like suddenly heated cold glass. His voice is too quiet with the backdrop of rain around them, but too loud in the strained air between them, with only brief exchanged glances conveying emotions that must be shared between them. “What was that?”

Jongdae swallows, finding his throat ridiculously parched and dry, rummaging in the mess of his mind for words. “Did you have it too?”

“I--” Baekhyun stutters, blinking rapidly. “I punched you,” he whispers. Jongdae, with his eyes fixed on Baekhyun's, only watches as Baekhyun's eyes drop to Jongdae's cheek, the spot he'd poked only minutes before. The spot he poked a lifetime ago.

Jongdae's eyes remain on Baekhyun's, eyebrows knitting together, mind whirling with the series of images--  _ memories--  _ that were so short but spoke so much. And yet, mere flashes behind his eyelids tell him nothing about what they had, what brought him to hate Baekhyun so much. Because that's the one thing he knows for certain.

His murmur, quiet in the sudden heavy silence that settled between them, both lost in thought and their own confusion, snaps Baekhyun's eyes back up to him. 

“What have you done for me to hate you so much?”

He had hated Baekhyun. That much is clear from the vague flashes of his memories, and that much Jongdae knows for certain.

But now, now looking straight into red eyes that have become so familiar, brown eyes seem so far away. Foreign, unrecognisable, with none of the comfort Jongdae manages to find upon searching the demon's red eyes.

Now, Jongdae bites his bottom lip, because all of a sudden he's so certain and so clear about something entirely different.

Which is funny. How could he feel so differently for the same person and be so certain about both feelings that are on opposite ends of the spectrum? On one hand is his previous hate, when they were alive. And yet now…

“How does this make any sense?” he mutters to himself, not expecting Baekhyun to stand suddenly.

Jongdae’s gazing up, the demon silhouetted ominously against the weeping skies and grey clouds, and jumps the slightest when huge wings spring out of his back from where they were folded up. And when he speaks up over the sound of rain, Jongdae’s eyebrows furrow immediately, though he makes no attempt to voice a protest.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun whispers. It reminds Jongdae of the first time Baekhyun apologised to him, a memory far closer and clearer than the murky, fast images that are still burned in the front of his mind.

But his eyebrows slant even further, creasing his forehead.

Why is it that strong and prideful Baekhyun always seems to be apologising to Jongdae?

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun’s saying, slowly backing away from the edge of the roof where they had been sitting. “For what I did, before.”

He may have left it unsaid, but Baekhyun is still perfectly aware of the silent words of apology for taking off now that would have followed. Jongdae only watches him rise into the air on wings that rival those of a dragon’s, Baekhyun speeding away from that rooftop and into the rain. Jongdae makes no move to go after him.

Though preferring Baekhyun by his side, he can’t deny the need for space, the need to stop to just think. Think through the memories that are still not making any sense, think through their relationship.

Drawing his knees up and closer to himself, Jongdae rests his chin on them. Or rather, what is more important to think about would be how much Baekhyun means to him. And how much they mean to each other.

  
  


Warm brown eyes that were narrowed so threateningly at him.

With a low sigh, Baekhyun buries his face in his hands, leaning back into the shadows against the wall that rises on one side of an alleyway.

That’s where he had gone wrong.

Baekhyun doesn’t quite remember the face of the other person that had flashed briefly in his memories, but he does remember what the wallet of that person looks like. He remembers notes slipped out of it and handed to him, he remembers laughing with the other person, he remembers the fake smiles and insincere promises he had thrown out.

He presses his fingers against his eyes hard enough for him to see little red stars behind his eyelids, the smog in the Seoul night sky making it impossible to look at the stars. The street light isn’t so bright in this side of the city, and all of a sudden he finds himself thinking of Jongdae’s glowing skin and white wings.

But his smile is the brightest of all, and the twinkle in his eyes easily replaces the lack of stars in the heavens above.

He quickly shakes his head. There’s no saying the angel would still want to see him, not after this.

Baekhyun finds himself chuckling, the bitter sounds echoing around the empty streets as he drags his fingers down his face. He would love to disassociate himself with the person he was when he was alive too, let alone Jongdae. He doesn’t blame Jongdae.

No matter what the turn out is like, he wouldn’t blame Jongdae.

He fucked up, he sinned, he wronged people when he was alive. It’s only natural that he must pay the consequences of his actions, since he had missed the chance to during his life. How had he lived so well, how come he shamelessly lived so well, despite being a selfish, greedy bastard? Losing Jongdae because of his past foolishness must be enough punishment-- because, after all, Jongdae is far too angelic, far too virtuous.

Jongdae had grabbed him, demanding to put a stop to Baekhyun’s manipulative lies that were fed to so many people he got close to. It makes him seem so innately  _ good, so heavenly _ , in comparison to Baekhyun’s wrongdoings. 

Baekhyun lifts a hand, blinking blankly at his own hand, the long black nails, the thin elegance of each finger. How strange, the sheer difference between past and present. It’s as though Baekhyun has become an entirely different person after death-- especially considering the playful, gentle poke he landed on Jongdae’s cheek compared to the slam of his fist against Jongdae’s face, intended to hurt, back when they were alive.

Such jarring difference almost makes Baekhyun think of their relationship in comparison-- because they had definitely not been fond of each other, and yet he’s finding himself sinking further and further into confusion the more he figures that no, they don’t actually hate each other, not now.

Baekhyun allows his eyes to shut again, burying his face into both his palms once again, slowly allowing his body to slip down the wall, uncaring for the scraping of his wings against the brick behind him. He draws his knees up into his chest the moment he’s on the cold concrete, keeping his face hidden in his hands. 

What felt so right suddenly feels so wrong, what would’ve been hate between them a lifetime ago suddenly feels a whole lot like the opposite, and it leaves Baekhyun leaning back to rest his head against the cool wall in an attempt to calm the dizzying spinning behind his closed eyelids. His confusion means absolutely nothing makes sense, and the questions swimming in the front of his conscience means his chest heaves as though bound with rope, tight with his sudden rush of frustration.

There are question marks plastered all over Baekhyun’s thoughts of himself, his life still vague and unclear, having only received a few moments of short memories to define the relationship he shared with Jongdae. But he’s questioning all of it, questioning what’s right.

Questioning whether their feelings during their life, when they both had physically alive and beating hearts in their chests, or their feelings in the afterlife, right this moment, are right-- because neither feel wrong, and yet the two different emotions he feels for Jongdae contrasts so strikingly against each other that Baekhyun makes absolutely no sense of it, no matter how hard he tries.

With a sigh escaping parted lips, Baekhyun cranes his neck up against the hard surface behind his head, letting his eyes crack open the slightest to peer up at the night sky stretching overhead-- or the patch of it that remains uninterrupted by tall buildings rising into the air and blocking Baekhyun’s view. It only serves to heighten the tightening, burning sense of frustration somewhere deeper in his ribcage, unable to fully see the sky.

His eyes move across the stretch right over head, anyway.

Jongdae’s meant to be up there somewhere.

If Baekhyun closes his eyes once more, he’d be able to think of Jongdae’s fingers and his lingering touches on the spikes going down Baekhyun’s wings, feel the warmth of his touch against the skin on his body if he tried hard enough. 

But considering how much he misses the angel’s glow, and how strange the cold night air is without Jongdae’s arms encircling him and radiating warmth around them, Baekhyun chooses not to dwell on that thought, lest it tempts him to go running right back to Jongdae’s side.

  
  
  


Red eyes flicker, catching on the ever-so-stunning glow of the being beside a lone man sitting at a table on his own. One pair of chopsticks, two bottles of soju, a few side dishes to himself, the figure beside him speaking to seemingly deaf ears.

The street the business man is drinking alone on is fairly empty at this hour into the night, only a few drunkards and couples on late night dates still hanging around the street food stall. 

The demon slinks into the shadows, keeping his eyes lowered to the ground as he detours around tables and chairs placed haphazardly after rude or drunk customers left the stall. 

“Slow down, Sir,” the blonde is saying as the business man pours himself another shot, downing it in one go. “Courtesy, even in a competitive environment, is always something you valued isn’t it? It’s not the time to let that go.”

The man hums, though never acknowledging the angel’s presence beside him. “Perhaps I should continue to be polite,” he murmurs as he purses his lips, pouring another shot.

“That’s right,” Jongdae murmurs in approval. “They might even repay the favour once they’re in the team leader position, you never know.”

“You never know.”

Jongdae immediately sits bolt upright, light brown eyes instantly widening.

The voice is so familiar to him, the soft murmur that sounds so close to him. The pink lips that formed the words, the fanged canines that slipped out between those lips when he spoke.

Jongdae stares, knowing the longer his eyes hold the demon’s red eyes the more dangerous it is.

It tempts him to soar over to Baekhyun, to kiss him senseless again, to feel his black hair between his fingers and to run his tongue along Baekhyun’s fangs. It’s all he ever wanted, and it’s admittedly lingered in his conscious, all these desires demanding to be addressed with every hour that passed since he had let Baekhyun go to give both of them the space they need. 

Jongdae’s only conclusion, after all of that, still comes back around to what he feels for Baekhyun, how he needs Baekhyun, the way he wants Baekhyun during the moments that he isn’t with him.

Jongdae only stares, rooted to the spot, mouth running dry at the thought and memory of Baekhyun’s lips, Baekhyun’s tongue. His widened eyes can’t widen any more, and yet it still feels as though he needs to drink more of Baekhyun in with his eyes alone-- as though to make up for the few nights where Jongdae gazed up at the night sky on his own, unable to conjure up an image of Baekhyun’s devilishly handsome face in his mind no matter how hard he tried.

The human, the mere mortal, simply carries on, finishing his first bottle of alcohol, unaware of the exchange of silent looks that spoke thousands of words over his hunched form.

“Baekhyun,” Jongdae whispers into the stilled air between them, blinking rapidly, letting his long eyelashes flutter against his cheek with every blink, enough to captivate the demon for a moment. 

“You never know,” Baekhyun says again, this time a fraction louder than the previous, taking a step forward and separating his body from the shadows that hid him so well. He bends down, eyes on the angel, as he leans in towards the business man’s ear. “Snatch the opportunity. Don’t let that other man become team leader if you can help it.”

Jongdae watches, eyebrows creased in his concern, as the man hums thoughtfully to himself, as though Baekhyun’s suggestion has just occurred to him. 

“I know you’re a good man, Sir,” the demon whispers against the business man’s temple. “You don’t have thirst after power and authority, you don’t have that ambition that fuels the fight in you.”

“So let it go.” Baekhyun looks up, gazing over the man’s shoulder and letting his eyes meet Jongdae’s once more before forcing himself to tear away from the angel’s beautiful brown irises that peer right back at him. “Let them have it. You’ve been stepping back for other people, you can do it again.”

“No,” Baekhyun mutters. “Enough of stepping back and letting unworthy people step all over you. Enough of giving up what’s meant to be yours.”

Jongdae stares, stares at the way Baekhyun’s blood red eyes glisten in the dim street lights, stares at the way his fangs are exposed everytime he speaks, emphasising his words even more. And though he speaks to the conflicted man, his lips nearly touching the man’s ear, Jongdae feels Baekhyun’s words like a kick in the chest, cleanly knocking the breath out of him.

Though he addresses the business man, it only feels like his words are meant for Jongdae.

“You’ll never know when the same opportunity will come up again.”

“You are an easily satisfied man,” Jongdae cuts in, mind reeling the longer he spends staring at the demon over the human’s head. It’s all too familiar, the banter thrown from one to another as though they were players on a field, snatching the ball out of each other’s grasps and stealing each other’s attention while they’re at it. “You can live a fine life being just that-- satisfied.”

“Are you sure you can live at ease if you allowed such an asshole of a man to be team leader instead of you?”

Jongdae pauses, swallowing upon Baekhyun’s eyes darting in his direction before the demon continues.

“If that man, your competition, is going to negatively influence your work environment,” the business man’s eyebrows furrow at Baekhyun’s words. “It wouldn’t work out better for everyone, would it?”

Baekhyun leans back, watching as a look of serious contemplation comes over the man’s facial features, chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of pickled side dishes. With yet another look casted towards the angel, he backs away from the business man’s small table-- his work here is done, the thought is planted into his head, and Baekhyun’s fairly certain that this time, he wins.

In a scramble of limbs and feathers, the angel shoots up from his seat next to the man, hot on Baekhyun’s heels as he leaves the shelter of the street food stall and into the night.

And though Baekhyun chooses to stick to the shadows at the edge of the buildings, inching away from the street lights, Jongdae walks underneath every light they pass, yet resolutely keeping the demon’s pace and stride. Their steps are silent, their breath don’t come in huffs of warm air in the chilly night, the space between them is silent.

The streets they stride through, side by side, have become foreign to the angel, and he glances up through his eyelashes at Baekhyun, silently wondering whether this is unfamiliar territory for the demon too without giving his words any voice.

And somehow, where they are don’t matter anymore, not when it’s just the two of them, in a dark street lit by several flickering lights, not another soul in sight. It doesn’t matter-- Jongdae’s eyes would remain on Baekhyun regardless.

It’s only at the uncomfortable pricking on the side of Baekhyun’s face from Jongdae’s staring that the demon finally halts his steps, slowly turning to face Jongdae with his red eyes lowered to the pavement under their feet-- under his leather boot-clad feet and Jongdae’s bare feet.

“The decision that seems ‘wrong’ to begin with,” he murmurs into the air between them, demanding Jongdae’s attention. The blonde’s eyes snap up, searching Baekhyun’s face when he pauses. “May be the smarter one.”

His eyes, glowing crimson orbs in the night, drift upwards, eventually landing on Jongdae’s pair of gentle, light brown eyes that blink slowly at him. This time, Baekhyun allows himself to let loose, lose himself-- lose himself to a warmer shade of red that borderlines orange that Jongdae has somehow managed to turn him into.

The scathing vermillon of his original eyes, bright and intense the same way he was rude and arrogant, was erased, faded enough to transform into an embracing warm red, blood orange instead. 

Baekhyun takes a step closer, gaze running down the pearly sheen of Jongdae’s skin that only appears in certain lighting, taking in the slope of his nose, the upwards curve of his parted lips.

“The so-called ‘kinder’ decision,” he whispers this time, watching the angel’s eyelashes shift as his gaze snaps down to Baekhyun’s lips. “Isn’t always the more correct one.”

It’s the only cue Baekhyun needed before dipping his head down, closing the gap between their faces and molding their parted and awaiting lips together.

Jongdae’s eyes have fluttered shut before even feeling Baekhyun’s lips on his, immediately wrapping bulky arms around the demon’s torso, stepping even closer so that he’d feel the press of their bodies together in a way that makes his breath stop and heart stutter in his chest. Baekhyun tilts his head, gently cupping Jongdae’s face in both his hands, pressing gentle kiss after gentle kiss, each longer and more lingering than the last-- it gives Jongdae the space to dream that perhaps this is Baekhyun’s own way of showing him the desperation that he shared, a mutual want to see, want to hold and want to stay, like this.

Jongdae’s eyelids flicker when they pull away just the slightest, hard breathing almost echoing around the dead empty street, bright brown eyes peering up through his eyelashes at the demon. And all he could see is the lone street light shining behind Baekhyun.

It lights up the back of Baekhyun’s head, and Jongdae’s lips are stretching into a smile far more brilliant than the light at the thought that it almost, ironically, looks like the demon has a halo around his head. Baekhyun, on the other hand, blinks in a poor attempt to not be completely blinded. Jongdae’s smile revealing all his perfect rows of pearly teeth is directed right at him-- and the light falls precisely on the angel’s face, lighting up his skin in the glow that Baekhyun adores so much.

And though there’s the light glittering in Jongdae’s beautiful, almost honey-like brown eyes, the closer Baekhyun gazes into his irises the more he realises that no, he could really only just see himself in Jongdae’s eyes. He would almost even dare to say that it almost seems as though he is all Jongdae could see, filling his vision until he only has eyes for Baekhyun.

Jongdae leans in once more, pressing another chaste kiss of only soft promises and sweet nothings to Baekhyun’s lips, letting himself linger there for a beat or two longer than he had really intended. Baekhyun’s mouth is pliant, lips as soft and addictive to the touch as Jongdae remembers, but he draws away hesitantly anyway.

He remains in Baekhyun’s space, lips still only inches from Baekhyun’s, face lowered to the ground beneath their feet and eyes remaining closed. 

“Listen to me, Byun Baekhyun,” Jongdae whispers, breath hitting Baekhyun’s lips. “I can’t care less what life you led before. I barely remember that, anyway.”

He lifts his head just the slightest so that he could gaze into red irises that look so stark and bright in the night, glowing in the dark just the slightest, they way they always do.

“The fact that you’re a good person now is more important to me,” Jongdae smiles, gently, tight-lipped, as he reaches out a hand to cup one side of the demon’s face, watching with warm eyes as Baekhyun leans his head into Jongdae’s palm.

Slowly, the smile stretches until Jongdae’s entire face is glowing with the light of it,his eyes crinkled and absolutely sparkling at him, as a similar lopsided grin shines on Baekhyun’s face, lips pulling up and stretching around his fangs. 

“The fact that you’re a good demon is the most important,” Jongdae murmurs, and Baekhyun’s entire rib cage constricts at the audible smile in Jongdae’s voice. 

With a little huff, Baekhyun pulls away from the everlasting warmth radiating from Jongdae, swallowing down his constant desire to wrap himself around the angel and circle him with his arms, greedily absorbing the gentle heat he offers. But no, he only smiles wider, giving a slight shake of his head.

“How does that make any sense?” he whispers before swooping down once more. Jongdae’s all too happy to comply and tilt his head to one side for another lasting kiss.

Baekhyun nearly completely missed the unfurling of Jongdae’s wings, and would have never noticed if he didn’t feel the slight tickling of feathers brushing against his back, enveloping him in the huge mass of soft white down, each one so remarkably soft to the touch as though spun out of sunlit clouds, with the way they shine in the artificial light. 

It’s exactly as Baekhyun expected-- and he could only smile into the kiss, hold Jongdae tighter against himself with his arms around Jongdae’s waist. 

History is there for you to learn your lessons from. The future is there for you to predict. But at the present, Baekhyun’s smiling, cheek pillowed against the crown of his lover’s head despite the beautiful blonde hairs tickling his face. And though their history, and what they know of it, is something Baekhyun would rather never have memories of, and he entertains the idea of spiralling through the cold night air together, high up in the sy to hopefully see more of the stars with their hands intertwined and their laughter carried by the wind, he chooses to focus on Jongdae’s sighs against Baekhyun’s lips continually pressing gentle kisses to the demon’s lips.

Buried in the centre of Jongdae’s huge fluffy wings, feeling the gentle warmth emanating from all directions around him, Jongdae’s lips moving languidly, lovingly, against his own-- though they may be on Earth, and Baekhyun may technically belong to Hell, but for a split second, he mistook all this for Heaven instead.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> INCASE YOU DIDNT GET IT bc I'm horribly vague sometimes and I didnt read through this at all, Baekhyun manipulated the people around him that he knew to scam them for money lmao and selfishness, greed, disloyalty and lying were his sins :') Jongdae became an angel bc he tried to correct Baekhyun's behaviour so he seemed much more virtuous. I'm sorry if i didnt explain anything well ;;;;;;;;
> 
> Heavily influenced by Along with Gods (Kyungsoo's movie) (concepts of Hell and sin and what happens once you die) as well as goblin (drama) (bc i really liked how they briefly showed ordinary people who have died, how they died, etc. I thought that was super interesting so I wanted to do something similar)
> 
> thank you for reading, hopefully this wasn't too much of a disaster!!!!!!  
> this took me so long to write because I was in such a bad slump, so if anything, the quality of this fic can be blamed on that!!  
> also i just wanted to get this fic out, so i didn't get to edit it yet... if you pick up on any mistakes I made, please please let me know, and I'll fix it! so yall can be my editors!  
> sorry to the few readers of my fics who know me as a sesoo writer, sorry this isn't sesoo!! idk when i'll be writing another sesoo bc i have a few other fics lined up (which i'm not in a huge hurry to get to because i'm not a great conditions for writing atm...) so sorry guys!!! i know there's a drought rn but i hope you enjoyed this one all the same...  
> any and ALL feedback would be absolutely LOVED!!  
> also i make playlists for every fic i write, do yall wanna know some of the songs I used as "ost"s? if you want I'll put a small list here just let me know!
> 
> (and ofc i wrote about some more serious concepts in here like low key gave yall a mini life lesson LMAO so i also hope you can click out of this story having learnt a few things about life as well LMAOOOOO nah jk)
> 
>  
> 
> hmu on social media!  
> IG: @djjdkim  
> Tumblr: @djjdkim  
> If you want writing prompts for exo (tumblr): @xoxoprompts  
> Twitter (for writing updates): @djjdkim


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